Customer Reviews

Sound of Prayer

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This is an interesting recording. There's no indication of when it was recorded and it certainly was not recorded for this CD. It seems that a poor recording of a live Selichot service was used as an afterthought in producing this CD. Almost pirate in nature.

The tenor leads in the recording are by Professor Daniel Hendrikson who has been singing with the ensemble for almost thirty years.His impressive production leaves one with the feeling of variable tonal voicing.

The wonderful arrangments are by Raymond Goldstein but the production leaves a lot to be desired. Pastor Goldstein was originally from South Africa where he was organ scholar at Cape Town Cathedral. The cantor is the famous Naftali Herstik who is still the chief cantor at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem and the conductor Elli Jaffe is the chief honorary foreign honorable conductor of the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mr Jaffe is also a regular conductor of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra one of the world's great orchestras.

The musical style throughout is from the East European school of chazzanut - there for example are no pieces by Lewandoski or Sulzer. This is partly due to the recommendations of the Church music enthusiast Reverend Zalman Druck.

This CD used the same front cover as another CD which was produced in 1997. That other CD was recorded very professionally. Some of the singers on the CD cover actually sang at the selichot service.

This CD is soon to be reissued with additional material apparently with orchestrations by the well known and loved composer, Rev Joseph Ness who is now based in Connecticut in the US. Precentor Gideon Zelermeyer may also appear in the additional recordings.