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Toccata is the last of Paul Ben-Haim’s Five Pieces for Piano, Op. 34, which he premiered during a live 1944 radio broadcast. His biographer has written that this work represented “an important stage, both in Ben-Haim’s own stylistic development and in the formation of a repertory of Israeli piano music.” Citing the Toccata as an example, he notes that each of the Five Pieces reflects European and Oriental influences, the former represented by Ravel’s Toccata (in the same key) from Le Tombeau de Couperin for piano and the latter by evoking “an Oriental plucked-string instrument, such as the oud or the qanun” through rapid successive repetitions of a single pitch. Jehoash Hirshberg, Paul Ben-Haim: His Life and Works (Jerusalem: Israeli Music Publications, 1990, 208-209). Liora Ziv-Li’s recordings of Ben-Haim’s Five Pieces and his earlier Nocturne are included in the nine-CD Psanterin anthology of Israeli piano music released in 2003 by the Israel Composers’ League (ICL) and Israel Music Center (IMC), and produced by Ari Ben-Shabetai.
Paul Ben-Haim (orig. Paul Frankenburger, 1897-1984) left Germany at the start of Nazi rule and settled in Tel Aviv, soon establishing himself as one of the leading Israeli composers of the first generation. He received the Israel Prize in 1957 for his orchestra piece The Sweet Psalmist of Israel, commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. Though his aesthetic is essentially Western, much of Ben-Haim’s music features cantillation and folkloristic Middle Eastern elements. Like those devoted to other composers featured here and in Twenty Israeli Composers, the National Library of Israel’s Paul Ben-Haim Archive (accessible online) includes such resources as scores, recordings, photographs, and correspondence.
