Performed by star clainettist Giora Feidman and the Arditti String
Quartett, Betty Oliver's
new music for
Paul Wegener's
famous silent movie „THE GOLEM“ made a spectacular world premier
in 1998 at the Konzerthaus Wien and became an internationally
successful Film
Concert. Likewise, the
chamber music
adaptation for string quartett or orchestra is
often performed on worldwide concert stages.
The film is located in a medieval Prague in the Ghetto and at the
Emperor's court. It tells the story
of Rabbi Löw,
who uses his magical sciences to create from a lump of clay the
GOLEM, who's
superhuman forces
save the Jewish communit from expulsion, but also causes their
foreboding ruin, when he becomes an uncontrollable instrument of
destruction.
The film brings together heterogenous worlds, different style
elements, various levels of ambiance and emotion: the
medieval legend
and the technical means of the early
20th century,
expressionistic
settings and impressionistic
lighting effects, the
Jewish Ghetto
and the
renaissance
world of the
emperor's court,
human hubris
and
deep belief,
die
childlike
innocence and the
rage of the
artificial being.
The music assigns individual musical themes to the different characters
and levels of action, the different worlds are marked by a different
musical style. All is increasingly interwoven following the dramatic
development of the action.
The main themes
of the music are a warm and tender
Nigun, which
is linked to the
"secret of life",
the ancient
prayer
‚Kol Nidrei’ which serves as foreboding theme of the
Rabbi in the
moment of undertaking the sacrosanct creation of life, und finally the
folk dances
and
klezmer
melodies of the
dynamic
street scenes in
the ghetto..
Integrated in this essence of the composition and the film are the
trifling and
frivolous motifs
assigned
to the
emperor's court and the
excessively thrilling
moments of the apocalyptic
blaze
and the frenzy of the GOLEM.
The
Golem-Suite
No.1 and the Suite "Zekhs
Yiddishe Lider und Tantz" are
adaptations of the film music and contain main themes.
Both are meant to stand without the film,
but are an interpretative reference to the action of the old legend.
" ... the evening's magic derives from teh
music.
Betty Olivero thought out a truly exciting music for the
expressionistic silent movie classic
Without ebing unseemly overstated, the music retells the Jewish legend,
tempts, abducts, captures and makes
the mystic sound..."
" ... Traditional Jewish folklore and sacral music are smoothly
connected to teh musical forms of the Renaissance.
Appealing effects are produced with with vast intervals and beautifully
counterpointing lines.
It's
a music of often dark timbres and an exotically irisdiscent poetry.“
„
Betty Olivero bridges the gap between old and new, pictures and sound...
The
classical-modern string quartett paints the color sounds of this tinted
version with sharply whirring
or gloomy lasting sounds: the
blue of the night, the blazing red or the cooly pale yellow.
Then,
it hatchels dissonantly, as if whipped by phases of clusters - up the
stairs, down the stairs
through the narrow angled and canted
contructions ...
When
the Freilach feeling breaks out in the Ghetto alleys, the
clarinet is allowed to jubilate
and
the string quartett becomes a grooving near-east rhythm group...“
YOUTUBE: "Zeks
Yidishe Lider un Tantz"
Suite f. Solo clarinet &
String Quartett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPlkoUaTN1Q
Videos film concert: