Joint Concert – Tel Aviv DVD – Sharon Kam, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Some concerts are important simply as occasions: The Joint Concert–Tel Aviv was a celebration of reconciliation, a performance shared by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic that would have been inconceivable a few years earlier. Zubin Mehta takes a massive band consisting of both orchestras through performances of Ben Haim’s fascinating Psalm, Ravel’s La Valse and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The Ravel is particularly impressive–a work that can often slip into feyness or the too overtly sinister–here has a depth of complexity to its sound that saves it from either, and the sheer volume of the harps in a couple of passages gives the performance an interesting and individual strangeness. The Beethoven is monumental in its scale–rarely has the transition between the “Scherzo” and the “Finale” sounded so like Forster’s goblins walking across the universe. Young and promising soloists–Viviane Hagner (violin) and Sharon Kam (clarinet)–play the Saint-Saens Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with the Israel Philharmonic and the Weber Concertino with the Berlin Philharmonic; we grow so rapidly used to the sound of the orchestras playing together that their individual sounds strike us as almost delicate.On the DVD: The DVD has menus in English, French, German and Spanish and is presented in 4:3 screen ratio with PCM stereo sound, relegating a description of the importance of the event to the booklet. –Roz Kaveney