Mizmorim: Far beyond the horizon

"Who is Frank Zappa?" asks an elderly lady in the row behind me at Basel's Gare du Nord. That's her right. After all, the rock icon, who swaggered in the New York avant-garde, has a lot to say with "Tehillim", the motto of this year's Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival, only marginally. The percussionist Christian Dierstein had just performed in the concert 150 + 1 Psalms in an impressive set-up of tubes, plates and percussion instruments. He performed Peter Eötvös' solo piece Psalm 151 In memoriam Frank Zappa from the year 1993. Eötvös describes his necrology as a "psalm". The "Tehillim", the Old Testament Psalter, is known to contain 150 psalms. The 151st psalm therefore does not exist there.

This programmatic deceit is reflected in the strategy for the tenth edition of the festival from January 24 to 31. Since 2015, the festival has been placing what points beyond the framework of its own Jewish culture and has become an inspiration for musicians of other religious backgrounds in aesthetically and historically exciting contexts: "Mizmorim" means "Psalms" in Hebrew and is therefore a generic term that refers equally to source texts and their settings or other adaptations.

Jewish life and Jewish faith

Before this year's edition, Artistic Director Michal Lewkowicz, who had also performed as a clarinettist at previous festivals, and President Guy Rueff were able to hone the profile with the help of an academic advisory team. Together with the festive opening in the music hall of the Casino Basel, there were twelve concerts: solo pieces, songs, chamber music and, exceptionally, works on the cusp of larger orchestral and vocal ensembles. There were twice as many youth events, networking opportunities and commissioned compositions for the anniversary, and the festival was twice as long as usual.

"I'm delighted that the audience is finding its way to us," said Lewkowicz after the opening concert, but articulated fears about the warlike developments in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. Eight weeks before the start of the festival, she had sent out a clear message of welcome as a precaution. No one should feel excluded from the anniversary, especially with the cooperation between Mizmorim and the Beit Yosef Synagogue of the Jewish Community of Basel, which took two years to prepare. "The synagogue is not only a place of prayer, but also a meeting place. The latter is often forgotten," said Lewkowicz. "The festival office was sprayed with 'Free Palestine' and Rabbi Moshe Baumel was spat at," she told the Basler Zeitung a few days before the festival began.

For the first time, Mizmorim did not have a motto with a specific historical or theoretical point of reference, as in previous years, for example when a musical perspective on the movement for a Jewish nation state before the founding of the state of Israel was developed in the "Blue-White Project" in 2023. In the anniversary year, Jewish life and faith should be reflected in as many facets and colors as possible, including those of interest to outsiders.

A perfect example of the programmatic Mizmorim strategy was the concert Psalm geheim on Friday morning. A regular working day for a matinee is unusual and testified to the courage of the organizers. The Zunftsaal in the Schmiedenhof was well filled, although only one "Zugstück" (Biblical songs by the Catholic Czech composer Antonín Dvořák), the festival's calling card in terms of sound: Secret Psalm for violin solo by Oliver Knussen (1952-2018), as Swiss premiere The Eternal is my shepherd, Psalm 23, by Alexander Uriyah Boskovich (born 1954) as well as works by Aram Hovhannisyan, Victor Alexandru Colțea and Eleni Ralli, the winners of the first three Mizmorim composition competitions in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

Lots of music from the 20th and 21st centuries

"I love Mendelssohn very much, but other things are far more important today," said Lewkowicz. Without it being explicitly stated in the title, the festival is now one of the hotspots for new music in Basel. If you look back at the Mizmorim programs of recent years, you will notice a decrease in songs and a growing number of works with individually mixed instrumental and vocal ensembles. The performance of the Tehillim by Steve Reich with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra with Tito Ceccherini standing in for Baldur Brönnimann, who was ill, was also Mizmorim's first collaboration with the Basler Madrigalisten. Another premiere was the live broadcast of Mizmorim Jazz with psalm improvisations by the Vein trios from the SRF radio studio. The audience - a total of 3200 visitors - responded to the novelties with open-hearted applause and enthusiasm for the technical challenges. Busy as a consultant and violinist was Ilya Gringolts.

Compositions in traditional chamber ensembles were performed by Alfred Schnittke, Frank Martin, Gideon Klein, Bohuslav Martinů and Arnold Schönberg; the opening concert also featured the world premiere of the commissioned work Mimma'amaqim for voices and ensemble by Helga Arias (born 1984). The concert Pro Pacem under the overall artistic direction of Jordi Savall in the Martinskirche Basel brought the festival to a close. The proportion of music from the 20th and early 21st centuries was exceptionally high. The special link to the 100th anniversary of György Ligeti's birth resulted from the exhibition Ligeti labyrinth at the Basel Music Museum. Curator Heidy Zimmermann - a close advisor to the Mizmorim Festival since its inception - pointed out that Ligeti, whose father and brother had died in concentration camps, had always regarded his Jewish origins as a private matter, not as an essential artistic theme.

There are many festivals that claim to be diverse and exclusive. In a phase of political escalation, in which parts of the Jewish population feel increasingly threatened even in Switzerland, the Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival proved its high caliber. It invited visitors to a showcase of works with roots in Hebrew and international cultures and presented adaptations from secular cultures. The genre of the psalm ("Mizmorim") and the anthology "The Psalter" ("Tehillim") were recognized as sources that transcend religious dimensions.

Next year the Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival from January 29 to February 2 in Basel.

Supplement on February 29, 2024:
Link to the broadcast of the opening concert on Pavillon Suisse