Michal Smoira-Cohn
The
conductor Gary Bertini
(1.v.1927
– 17.iii.2005):
A
musical driving force
It is customary in the world of
music to distinguish between those who create it and those who perform it. This
gives the impression that music makers belong to two separate worlds: one
creates the music and leaves it in its embryonic state, the other brings it out
into the world; the one composes the music as notes on paper, the other sets it
free, turning the creator’s notes into audible reality.
Not so! If we look beyond the
confines of 20th century art music, we can clearly see that, in most
musical cultures, creators were also performers. Performers, for their part, do
not serve as mere executants; they shape the music, interpret it and
perpetually re-create it.
If this division into creators and
performers is misguided in most cases, it is glaringly misleading when applied
to Gary Bertini, one of Israel’s greatest musicians who, sadly, was snatched
from us so suddenly by death. Gary was an architect of music. He constantly envisioned and planned the
performing bodies of which he was in charge, improved them and continually
raised their stature. His unique quality cannot be fully appreciated by
pointing to a specific concert under his direction; it was discernible, above
all, in the vision of his grand designs and in his constructive work, which led
to the successful establishment of splendid musical institutions.
It was Gary Bertini who, in the
1960s, initiated concerts dedicated to contemporary music – long before such
events became fashionable; it was he who, as musical adviser for the Batsheva Dance Company, inspired Israeli composers to write
serious dance music; it was he who formed ‘Rinat’, the Israel Chamber Choir,
and brought it up to a standard of excellence in choir singing hitherto unknown
in Israel; it was he who created the Israel Chamber Ensemble, a unique musical
body which combined voices and instruments into a basically complete entity; it
was he who brought the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, IBA, to the splendid
heights it attained during the years when he was its music director; and it was
he who thought out and steered the artistic course of the New Israeli Opera
during his tenure as its artistic director.
As a planner and architect of
music Gary Bertini enjoyed spreading his wings wide and hovering, like a great
eagle, over music centres of the world. He served, at various periods, as the
artistic director of the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, the
Hamburg Opera House, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Rome Opera
House, and the San Carlo Opera House in Naples – a post
which he took up a few months before his death. He was also principal guest
conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra and artistic consultant of the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and appeared frequently with major international
ensembles, including the Scottish Opera, the Paris National Opera, the BBC
Symphony Orchestra and the La Scala Opera in Milan. He recently
appeared in Moscow and at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, at the invitation of
their music director Valery Gergiev.
Yet it
seems to me that his greatest contribution was in shaping and promoting Israeli
music. He was bound, as if by a Gordian knot, to the music of Mordecai Seter,
his revered teacher and mentor; he often conducted his Sabbath Cantata,
Jerusalem Symphony, Midnight Vigil and Ricercar,
recorded them, and introduced them to audiences and ensembles all over the
world. He conducted two operas by Josef Tal and Israel Eliraz,
Ashmedai and The Temptation,
in Hamburg and Munich; here in Israel he premiered their first electronic opera Massada
967, and their opera Josef, which he conducted at the New
Israeli Opera. He also premiered Ben-Zion Orgad’s
cantata The Old Decrees and Mark Kopytman’s Memory,
and promoted many of these composers’ other works. In the last
months of his life he immersed himself in Joseph Bardanashvili’s opera A
Journey to the End of the Millennium, based on A.B. Yehoshua’s
novel, in preparation for its forthcoming world premier at the New Israeli
Opera in May. I am not aware of any major Israeli composition that has not been
performed by Gary Bertini; no other musician contributed quite so much to the
success of Israeli music. We can not imagine what we would have lost, and how
much poorer Israel’s musical life would have been, were it not for the splendid work
of Gary Bertini.
Gary was born on 1 May 1927 in Brichevo (then in
Rumania, now part of Moldavia).
After staying with his grandparents in the village, he and his parents moved to
the town of Soroka, where his father, the poet and writer K. A. Bertini, was the
principal of the local ‘Tarbut’ Hebrew high school.
During the Second World War, he was sent to a camp in Bessarabia, where he remained
until the camp was liberated by the Red Army. He reached Eretz-Israel at the
end of 1946. He studied music at the Music Teachers’ College in Tel Aviv, then in Milan and later at the Paris Conservatoire. On his return, he worked for
a while at the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s Folk Music Department, before
devoting his powers and energies to promoting choral music in Israel –
not least through the establishment of ‘Rinat’ – and to developing and shaping
other musical bodies which he founded and conducted. He also made an invaluable
contribution to Israeli theatre, as the composer of incidental music for about
forty plays produced by ‘Habima’ (Israel National
Theatre) and the Cameri Theatre.
His education made Gary a true man of
the world, who spoke and understood over eight languages. But in his heart he
always remained an Israeli and an enthusiastic Zionist. He was bound heart and
soul with all that took place in Israel
and strove tirelessly to give as much as he could of himself to the advancement
and development of the musical life of his country.
Gary was also a
grand master in the field of friendship; the circle of people who were close to
him enveloped him in their devotion, stood by him at the difficult moments in
life and drew upon the generous gift of his friendship, which was beneficent
and encouraging.
We all grieve for him we lost and
is no more.
Michal Smoira-Cohn, a musicologist and lecturer,
is former head of the Music Division of the Israel
Broadcasting Authority and former head of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.