Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra

A radio station made this orchestra. Assembled in the late 1930s as the Palestine Broadcasting Service Orchestra under Karel Salmon, it became the Kol Israel Orchestra in 1948 and took its present name in the 1970s, and it has never ceased to be a broadcasting body: most of its concerts are still recorded and transmitted. Since the 1980s it has played in the Henry Crown Symphony Hall, part of the Jerusalem Theatre complex. Nine music directors have shaped it — among them Lukas Foss, Gary Bertini and Leon Botstein, and Frédéric Chaslin, who returned for a second term; the violinist Julian Rachlin has led it since 2023. Carnegie Hall and the Musikverein have heard it on tour, and its long habit of recording has left an unusually complete account, decade by decade, of what an Israeli orchestra actually played.