This release forms
part of the Milken Archive releases
of American Jewish Music. In addition
the orchestrations of these cantorial
works have been commissioned by the
Archive and they serve to celebrate
the American phase of development of
the form (principally émigré
cantors) that saw the rise of Concert
hazzanut – those works designed
for concert performances.
The soloist is Cantor
Benzion Miller born in the immediate
aftermath of the Second World War in
Germany but who studied in America and
in Israel. Orchestral support was a
common feature of the medium, one that
was extensively practised (as recordings
from the inter War heyday of the 1920s
and 1930s vividly show). Most of the
cantors wrote their own virtuosic pieces,
encouraging orchestrators and copyists
to fill in the supportive tissue so
that they represent a combination of
florid cantorial individuality and more
generic material. Here Miller pays tribute
to his cantorial forebears.
That said I think it
was a mistake to start with Roitman’s
Hayyom T’amtzeinu with its jog
trot orchestration and neither-fish-nor-fowl
singing which shows Miller constricted
and strained at the top of his compass.
Much better things follow with the first
of Schorr’s settings showing how much
more sympathetic Miller sounds when
the vocal lines sit well for the voice.
The explosive melismas and runs with
finely taken divisions remind one how
closely allied to the operatic this
music can be – note the especially florid
Pinchik song with its quasi-operatic
end. A much more subtle example of the
art is Jassinowsky’s The Prophecy
of Isaiah which abjures the overtly
expressive and gives us instead some
very suitably Russian sounding orchestration.
Kusevitsky was famed and rightly and
his setting shows a confluence of both
the Western and Eastern traditions.
Tremolandi and pizzicato strings meanwhile
animate Schorr’s Ribbon Ha’olamim
and one of the most concise and
sheerly impressive settings is Glantz’s
and it contrasts strongly with the Russo-Italianate
influences on the Zilberts. There are
longeurs – the Ganchoff for instance
and parts of the Schorr, which tend
to pile on volcanic melismas – but there
are also incongruities. The Vienna Boys
Choir turn up for the penultimate piece,
by Aaron Tishkowsky (I find it hard
to view the conjunction with anything
other than an arched eyebrow, all things
considered), and the romantic cadences
in the Bogzester are very strong.
The disc collates performances,
noted above, with different orchestras
and locations. Sometimes the acoustic
is unsympathetic – I had on one or two
occasions the eerie feeling that there
was separate tracking of voice and band.
Miller meanwhile, when the song sits
comfortably, displays virtuosic flair
and florid drama as well as some reflective
gentleness. In the midst of it all though
I turned to my Pearl LPs and played
Hermann Fleishmann’s Toras Haschem
T’mino - the Mendelssohnian nobility
of it came as a kind of balm.
Jonathan Woolf
Cantor Benzion Miller (tenor) 
