From the Music of the Portuguese synagogue in the 19th
to the Rolf Lieberman Era in the 20th century
The presence of Jewish Culture in Europe is going back to the times of the Roman Empire. In 2021 Germany has celebrated 1700 years of Jewish live and culture. The city of Hamburg decided in 2020 to rebuild the large synagogue on Bornplatz, which had been destroyed 1938 during the Reichskristallnacht. On this occasion, the University of Music in Hamburg initiates an international conference on Jewish music in Hamburg past and present.

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Yuval Shaked (Haifa)

Lecture and discussion

The opera Der Turm ‒ Composer Josef Tal’s colla- boration with librettist Hans Keller as conceived and reflected in their correspondence

In the opera, Josef Tal and Hans Keller pondered an alternative
to the ancient Tower of Babel ‒ a monument which would refute schism, and symbolize instead fraternity and peace. Yet, this venture too collapses and fails. Controversies, conspiracies, and quarrels between individuals and peoples prevail. The solution they pro- pose is a tower erected by a visionary artist corresponding to the cultural-political dilemma of human history ‒ a temple of the Arts which would herald messages of sheer truth. The opera The Tower had been premiered on September 18, 1987 in (West) Berlin, in the framework of the Festspiele, by Staatstheater Kassel under the baton of Ádám Fischer. Yuval Shaked elicits some insights into the opera‘s compositional process from the correspondence between Josef Tal and his friend, the Austrian-born British violinist, musicologist and a senior BBC figure Hans Keller.

Yuval Shaked was born in Gezer in Israel. He studied at the Rubin Academy of Music, Tel Aviv University, and „New Music Theatre“ with Mauricio Kagel at the Musikhochschule Köln. 1986-2016 he taught at the Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. From 1990 to 1996 he edited the magazine IMI-News and the CDs produced by the Israel Music Institute. In 2000-2008 he directed the Feher Jewish Music Center at the Diaspora Museum (Tel Aviv) and produced and edited its CDs. Since 2000 he has been teaching at the University of Haifa. In 2011-2015 he served as Head of the University‘s Department of Music, and in 2016-2020 as Head of the School of the Arts. Yuval Shaked is a composer and has written numerous musicological and analytical essays. Three times he was among the tutor team of the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt.