<<  -- 3 --  Malcolm Miller    WAVES OF INTENSITY

Navok, whose recent prizes include the prestigious 'Prime Minister's Award' in Israel and the CAP Award from the American Music Center, is clearly a composer of outstanding potential with a notable and growing oeuvre. Following the work, PercaDu also played an ingenious arrangement of Bach's A minor Organ Prelude with evocative contrapuntal blending and ravishing harmonic richness, a special treat. The orchestra too gave an encore, a movement from the Symphony No 45 by Haydn.

The occasion was made even more memorable by the short speech by Vera Stern, widow of Isaac Stern, who presented the Aviv Award to the renowned architect Daniel Liebeskind, who some forty years earlier, had received an AICF scholarship as a young accordionist on the threshold of a musical career. Liebeskind responded warmly by underlining the values of the Arts, and music especially, in creating and nurturing a civilised and humanitarian society, a message that seemed apposite in the context not only of the award, but also of Liebeskind's achievements in their wider universality.