It’s always a boon when there is a recording available of a production you’ve attended and none more so than the recently attended Gideon – a play with music, a collaboration between Richard Fay and Daniel Mawson through their company Modalways CIC. Following the life of a magnetic musician and his family facing impossible choices, its factual narrative is accompanied by a delightful fusion of Klezmer, Czech folk, classical compositions, and jazz performed by a live ensemble.
My interest was piqued when noting that the recording labelled as Volume 3 was accompanied by a not entirely related Volume 4, raising the obvious question as to what/where were Volumes 1 and 2? Well, a little bit of delving was to unveil a musical goldmine, but first of all we have to take a step back in time.
In 2008, Michael Kahan, a Manchester-based musician was tragically killed in a random street attack. With his then duo partner, Ros Hawley, Michael had planned to create a student-based ensemble before his untimely demise. His dream was fulfilled in 2011 when, with the support and approval of his family, The University of Manchester’s klezmer ensemble celebrating his memory – The Michael Kahan Kapelye – was founded by Hawley and Fay. Since then, it has become an established and ongoing component of the world music provision in the Music Department with over 100 music students having passed through the ensemble, and when Hawley stepped down in 2018, her place was taken by Mawson, an alumnus of the ensemble.
Now in its fifteenth incarnation, it has performed to date approximately 20 concerts at the Manchester Jewish Museum and seven Hallé Klezmer Evenings of Music and Dance, along with a monthly Klezmer Tune Club (open to all musicians) and a monthly KlezJam.
Fay and Mawson subsequently co-founded a folk-classical ensemble, Klezmer Klassica, to explore the musical meeting point of klezmer and classical music. Other spin-off activities include Amid the Mirk Over the Irk – When Irish Meets Klezmer which imagines a musical meeting back in the day between musicians in the slums on either side of Manchester’s River Irk, and most recently the Arts Council funded new work Gideon – a play with music.
Klezmer is the instrumental folk and dance music of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jewish communities, with a rich history which dates back to the middle-ages. Some ‘classical’ compositions carry Jewish musical inflection, whether klezmer, liturgical, or other. Some pieces feature a reworked ‘folk’ tune from the shtetls of Eastern Europe; others are based on a new ‘folk’-inspired tune; whilst others still were composed by those for whom klezmer is an abiding musical fascination.
Classical music has courted folk music and dance for centuries. Over its history it has integrated popular dances including waltzes or pavannes. Along the way, there have also been lesser-known Jewish classical composers who have explored traditional Jewish dances (like the hora), and to a greater extent explored the melodies and harmonies of this tradition. What happens if some of the ‘high art’ sensibilities of the klezmer-inspired compositions are pulled back to the raw folk culture from which it’s derived? What about orchestrating the melodies of the old world with a chamber ensemble mindset? Klezmer Klassica explore such questions and more besides in two sets of recordings, with Volumes 1 & 2, released in December 2024, capturing recent performances at evocative venues in Manchester.
Volume 1 presents a session from the Manchester Jewish Museum at which Alexander Krein’s Jewish Sketches for clarinet quintet (1909/1914) was recorded. The melding of his klezmer heritage and his more classical training in these sketches gives the Klezmer Klassica project a starting foundation for the ensemble’s explorations.
Volume 2 presents three works recorded at the Anthony Burgess Foundation. Opening with a reimagining of a klezmer-like theme by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) from the 4th movement of his Piano Trio No.2 (Op. 67), written in 1943, the arrangement, Dmitry’s Tanz, reflects a ‘reklezmerising’ as it were of the original theme.
A special rearrangement of Fay’s In Remembrance of Lost Worlds (2009) follows, an example of work in Klezmer Klassica’s repertoire written by composers who have an abiding fascination with klezmer: of the many lost worlds that might be imagined by the title, the destroyed home world for klezmer quickly comes to mind.
The volume closes with a double move back in time with Joseph Achron’s (1886-1943) Jewish (or Hebrew) Melody (1911, Op. 33) and Jewish (or Hebrew) Lullaby (1918, Op. 35, no. 2), brought together in a new arrangement resulting in a musical palimpsest of original folk, Achron’s musical reimagining of it, and a modern ‘reklezmerisation’ of it.
In April 2025, Volumes 3 & 4 was released, with Volume 3 focusing on the new drama about the life and work of Moravian Jewish pianist and composer Gideon Klein (1919-1945). Opening with the ensemble’s re-imagining of Klein’s 1943 arrangement of Lullaby “Sh’chav B’ni” (Sleep, My Son), it is followed by Daniel Mawson’s fresh look at the musical material in the second movement of Klein’s string trio, a set of variations based on the Moravian folk song Ta kněždubská věž (The Spire of Knezdub).
Volume 4 opens with Mawson’s Red Bank followed by Hallé musician Chris Emerson’s arrangement of Boris Levenberg’s (1950-) Hassidic Scene – Kaddish and dance in memory of my father (1997). Emerson’s own composition Compassion (2024) comes next before concluding with his arrangement of Levenberg’s fiery A Tailor’s Song (2005).
There is a lot to enjoy and reflect upon in these eclectic recordings and I would highly recommend checking them out as well as keeping your eyes peeled for upcoming live performances from Fay and Mawson in their various guises.
Fay is a composer, arranger, ensemble leader, performer, and educator with, unsurprisingly, an impressive back catalogue of work in his own right which can be explored further at www.richardfay.co.uk
Mawson is a multi-instrumentalist performer, composer, sound designer, klezmer educator, and arts producer based in Manchester. Further details https://www.danielmawson.com/
Klezmer Klassica Volumes 1 & 2 and Volumes 3 & 4 along with other recordings, including Amid the Mirk Over the Irk, are available to listen to and purchase via https://richardfay.bandcamp.com/music
Author: Mark Davoren