Leeds School of Music Choir performs Werner Baer's Vekidashtem et Shnat Hachamishim for the 2016 Being Human Festival.

Date	25th November 2016
URL	https://livestream.com/accounts/3260965/events/6654202/videos/142963107
Format	Video
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Werner Baer MBE (1914 - 1992) was founding musical director of the Sydney Jewish Choral Society. The composer’s note on the 1990 score of V’kidashtem et shnat hachamishim (And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year) reads: 

Chorale for S.A.T.B. & piano written for and dedicated to the Sydney Jewish Choral Society on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the North Shore Synagogue, Lindfield N.S.W., Australia. 

The text is drawn from Leviticus 25: 10–13: God’s injunction that every fifty years all leased or mortgaged lands were to be returned to their original owners, and all slaves and bonded labourers were to be freed (the first verse—‘proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof’—is also the inscription on the Liberty Bell in the U.S.A.). Composed in a declamatory style, the work draws upon features of Jewish prayer motifs, underpinned by transparent, often parallel harmony to produce an exciting, celebratory atmosphere, punctuated only briefly by a Cantabile section, sung in this performance by a solo sextet.

(c) Dr Joseph Toltz