About 1,500 Muscovites, many with tears in their eyes, crowded into Tchaikovsky Hall last Thursday night to hear renowned American Cantor Joseph Malovany perform classical pieces of chazzan.
The concert, in what is the equivalent here of New York’s Carnegie Hall, was another remarkable event in what has recently become a virtual parade of history-making happenings for Soviet Jewry.
The concert, one of five being given in the Soviet Union by Malovany, was sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which brought Malovany to the USSR for a two week program of master classes for cantorial students.
In the Moscow concert, which the Joint billed as “an historic night for the Jews of the Soviet Union,” Malovany sang Jewish liturgical music and Hebrew and Yiddish melodies.
The 1,500 tickets for the concert, which had a face value of six rubles — about $10 — sold out in less than 24 hours. There were even reports of scalpers selling tickets outside the famed hall for four times the original price.
Malovany charmed his audience with music spanning 3,000 years of Jewish history, from “Shir Hama’alot” to the soulful prayer “Ani Ma’amin.”
He was accompanied by a full symphony orchestra consisting of members of the Moscow Philharmonic and conducted by Konstantin Krimetic, a non-Jew.
Thursday’s was the first of five concerts Malovany will give. There will be another Wednesday in Moscow, at Tchaikovsky Hall, two in Tashkent and another in Leningrad.
Net proceeds from the concerts will benefit the Soviet Childrens’ Fund, which helps handicapped children.
“As a social fund itself, the JDC felt it appropriate to work with a similar organization on its home ground,” said Ralph Goldman, honorary executive vice president and now senior consultant to the Joint.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
