This talk/recital marks the launch of Classical and Popular Music in Israel (Eastman Studies/URP), with an illustrated introduction by British musicologist Malcolm Miller, surveying the volume and offering a concise orientation to Israeli art and popular music—transcultural dialogues, canon and identity, and performance contexts. The recital features Iris Malkin (mezzo-soprano), Neal Stulberg (piano), and Malcolm Miller (piano), including the USA premiere of songs from Oded Zehavi’s Resonating Voices, and works by Yehezkel Braun, Paul Ben-Haim, and Josef Tal.

This event is made possible by the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and the Department of Musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

Malcolm Miller is a musicologist and pianist, honorary associate and associate lecturer at The Open University, UK, and Editor of Arietta, Journal of the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe. He has published widely on Beethoven, Wagner, and contemporary music, including a monograph, Boundaries, Space and Register in Beethoven’s Piano Music (Boydell & Brewer, 2025) and as editor of the volume of essays Classical and Popular Music in Israel (Eastman Studies in Music, URP, Boydell, 2025).

Miller was recipient of a Jewish Music Institute (JMI) Millennium Award for his project ‘Piano Music by Composers in Israel’, and Director of Research of the Forum for Israeli Music of the JMI at SOAS, University of London, where he co-organised the conference Art Musics of Israel in 2011. Recent chapters on Jewish Music include a study of correspondence between Paul Ben-Haim and the family of Otto Crusius in Jüdische Musik im süddeutschen Raum (2021); “Ancient Symbols, Modern Meanings: The Use of the Shofar in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Music,” in Qol Tamid: The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture (2017); and “Bloch, Wagner and Creativity: Refutation and Vindication,” in Bloch Studies (2016). He also co-edited Beethoven the European: Transcultural Contexts of Performance, Interpretation and Reception (Brepols, 2023) and Music and Exile: From 1933 to the Present Day (Brill, 2023).

Video Contents:

00:00:00 – David Brown, Introduction
00:3:20 – Malcolm Miller, Illustrated Talk
00:42:30 – Concert
00:42:30 – Yehezkel Braun, Songs of the Dove and the Lily (text: Lea Goldberg, 1911-1970) [Iris Malkin, mezzo soprano, Malcolm Miller, piano]
00:42:30 – I. The cool of the evening
00:46:16 – II. Mellow the wine
00:48:03 – III. O where is your love gone?
00:49:53 – IV. The night has enclosed me
00:51:40 – Three piano pieces [Malcolm Miller, piano}
00:51:40 – Paul Ben-Haim, ‘Pastorale’ from Five Pieces Op 34 (1943)
00:58:24 – Josef Tal, ‘Basso Ostinato’, 2nd Movt of Sonata for Piano (1950)
01:01:52 – Paul Ben-Haim, Berceuse Sfaradite
01:05:00 – Oded Zehavi, 3 songs from Resonating Voices (2025), USA premiere [Iris Malkin, mezzo soprano, Neal Stulberg, piano]
01:05: – From Part I: Light — text: Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921)
01:09:15 – From Part III: Di vint mil — text: Yitzik Manger (1901–1969) [Yiddish]
01:12:35 – Migrating birds — text: Lea Goldberg (1911–1970) [Hebrew]
01: 15:55 – Three Songs from Twelve Songs of the Land (1993)
arr. Menachem Wiesenberg (b. 1950)
01:15:55 – Eli, Eli — text: Hana Szenes; music: David Zehavi
01:21:30 – Night by Night — text: Nathan Alterman; music: Mordecai Ze’ira
01:24:40 – The Hyacinth — text: Lea Goldberg; music: R. Gwili