The Russian composer Joel Engel (1868-1927) is unofficially considered ''the father of Jewish music''. He paved the way for a nationalist movement that used Yiddish and Hebrew folksongs as the basis of a serious art-form. Well before Kodaly and Bartok in Hungary, Engel went out to the shtetls of eastern Europe, writing down the villagers' songs and then composing music inspired by his excursions. This first-ever album of his music reveals the melodic immediacy of these songs and instrumental pieces, capturing the soul of a people and a centuries-old vanished culture. The musicians of teh Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival are the highest-calibre local professionals; players for the orchestral and chamber-music concerts include members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Opera and Ballet Orchestras, and faculty members of the music departments from Carnegie mellon and Duquesne Universities. The recordings on this album represent a six-year project devoted to the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music and its affiliated Russian composers.
