About the creation

In the summer of 2014 the pianist Heidrun Holtmann from Berlin asked me whether I would be willing to compose for her a new piece for piano solo. Ms.Holtmann had played a good deal of my piano works, and my piano concerto is dedicated to her and was premiered by her with the Duisburg Symphony Orchestra in 2010. The purpose of that new commission was to premiere the piece in 2015, the commemorating 50th year of the new established relations between Germany and Israel.

While I was working on the music, a war broke out again between Israel and the Gaza Strip, known later as Operation Protective Edge. I shared deeply the general frustrations of a new war, and the music which I had started to compose was naturally influenced by that mood. But as the work progressed, I felt also a need to express some moments of a lighter, or livelier mood. After all, in the dark situations of life we look for, and hope for, positive things to happen, too. That's why I called the work In Spite Of All That.

The piece was completed in August 2014, two weeks after the war, and premiered by Heidrun in Israel in April 2015 at the Jerusalem Music Center, as part of a program consisting of works by German and Israeli composers.

Tzvi Avni