Jerusalem, Music Centre: Andre Hajdu

An 80th birthday concert full of the spirit of youthful exploration reflected the innovative interactive aesthetic of Andre Hajdu, the Hungarian-Israeli composer, whose oeuvre is gradually gaining wider international exposure. Presented by the Jerusalem Music Centre on 29 March 2012, the programme featured works from the last quarter of a century for chamber duo and solo piano, including two premières, culminating in an improvisational interactive jam session by an array of students and colleagues, joined by the composer himself at the piano. To begin was Hajdu's Sonatine for Flute and Cello (1990) ‘in the French style’ performed with panache by the flautist Yossi Arnheim and cellist Amir Eldan. It is an elegantly written work radiating the spirit of Hajdu's teachers Milhaud and (less overtly) Messiaen, with whom he studied in Paris in the 1950s and 60s. Beneath the light-hearted veneer of polyphonic textures is a serious, plangent expressiveness. The first movement, libre et gai, moves from the chirpy, Poulenc-like delicacy of a cat-and-mouse imitative chase, building tension towards a final stretto. In the second movement, molto moderato, Arnheim wove a lyrical cantilena for flute over gentle cello accompaniments, giving way to rarified high cello registers shadowed by eloquent lower lines of the flute. An exuberant dance-like finale, Libre mais un peu rythmé, increased in drama before receding to a tranquil conclusion.