At the Western Wall

for Violin und Piano

Semites are Arabs, Jews, Maltese, Lebanese, Assyrians and a number of other peoples of the Middle East. Who, then, are the anti-Semites, with whom are they fighting, whom do they hate and, most importantly, why? These are the questions that Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, are asking today.

As an author, I was also interested in finding the answer to these questions, which I tried to do by composing the piece “At the Western Wall”. In it, you can hear three musical themes stylized under oriental music, two of which are reminiscent of Jewish tunes, and one – Arabic. These themes, arising from afar, develop, intertwine with each other in full agreement or strongly confront each other, which, in my opinion, reflects the human relationships of the inhabitants of different nationalities of modern Israel. And at the end of the piece, the music disappears into nowhere, just as it first appeared out of nowhere, resembling a caravan moving through the sands of the desert.

Slawa Ulanowski