by Daniel Hathaway
“I spent a week in Mantua one afternoon” sounds like a standup comic’s putdown of a hopelessly boring city. No such thing on Sunday afternoon, March 2, when Gregory Ristow, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, and members of HaZamir Cleveland youth choir, presented “Synagogue and Salon” at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church.
Conceived as a week-long walking tour through Mantova, the program was designed to better understand the complex musical world of Jewish violinist and composer Salamone Rossi. During their virtual progress through the Italian city that was ruled for 400 years by the wealthy Gonzaga family, the audience heard some 30 pieces of music by Rossi and his contemporaries, as well as examples of the popular and folk music of the streets, all excellently performed by the 24-voice choir and 8-piece instrumental ensemble of bowed and plucked strings with percussion and chamber organ.
Rossi, who lived from around 1570 to around 1628 — on the cusp of the Renaissance and Baroque periods — produced a prodigious quantity of music. He was equally at home in the Hebrew-texted music of the synagogue and the secular Italian music of the court and salon represented by the madrigal. Ristow and Cleveland Chamber Choir gave insightful performances of works in both genres.
The first stop was a sabbath visit to a synagogue to hear Rossi’s beautifully sung, somber setting of the psalm Al naharot bavel, in which temple singers lamented their deportation to Babylon.
Im eshkaḥekh y’rushalayim, tishkaḥ y’mini.
If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
Pairs of liturgical psalms were broken up by a joyous performance of El Har Bat Tsiyon, an upbeat 17th century Turkish song to the Holy City of Jerusalem, sung by Dominic Aragon, Albert Donze, Peter Wright, and Joel Kincannon to the beat of a frame drum.
Advancing to one of Mantua’s literary salons, we were treated to an expressive account of Rossi’s Io moro, ecco ch’io moto, with its typically madrigalian references to dying (of pleasure), and a spoken poem, A vile e indegno oggetto di mirare, performed by Anna O’Connell and Jennifer Roza. Turning to music by Monteverdi, O’Connell both played her Italian triple harp and beautifully sang along with theorbo in Si dolce e’l tormento.
The full instrumental ensemble sent us on our way with Sinfonnia Undecima and Al partir del mio sole.
Out in the streets it was a busy day in the village. Kira McGirr led off with a surprisingly cheerful 13th century Sephardic folk song Y una Madre composer asado with its persistent, unsettling refrain (“And a mother ate the cooked flesh of her cherished son.”) Soprano Val Sibilia and tenor Peter Wright contributed Giuseppe Cenci’s La Montovana, a heartfelt banishing of winter. Then a dance broke out during an instrumental sonata, with the interrupting chamber choir deployed in the side aisles — singers were constantly in motion, Chanticleer-style.
After intermission, we made a visit to the Gonzaga Palace for some splendid court music and choreography featuring dancers Phaik Tzhi Chua and Anna O’Connell, and soprano and violinist Abigail Hakel-Garcia, including the Gonzaga theme song, Alta Gonzaga.
The virtual tour ended where it began, with synagogue music on the sabbath, this time ranging in texture from low, unison men’s voices (Daniel Ben Yehuda Dayan’s Yigdal) to an elaborate, 7-voice Rossi processional, Eftah na s’fatai:
Eftaḥ na sefatai ve’e’enei beron;
Let me open my lips and respond in joyous song;
Le’eil ḥai ashir binsoa ha’aron.
To the living God will I sing during the procession with the ark.
Needless to say, this was an extensive and immersive experience, with prodigious documentation — an informative lecture by Oberlin musicologist Charles Edward McGuire preceded the performance, detailed notes by Ristow were printed in the programs, and you could scan a QR code for texts and translations. You could also just sit back and enjoy getting to know Salamone Rossi with open ears alone.
Photos from the Saturday concert.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com March 13, 2025.
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