Jewish rhapsody (Truat Melekh) for Clarinet and Orchestra

Andre Hajdu wrote Truath Melech, subtitled Rhapsody on Jewish Themes, for clarinet and string orchestra in 1974. Born in Budapest in 1932, he had studied ethnomusicology with Kodaly and spent two years documenting Roma music, escaped to Paris after 1956 to work with Milhaud and Messiaen, and settled in Jerusalem in 1966. The piece belongs to the Israeli part of that biography: its title is a biblical phrase for the blast of a king's trumpet, and it draws Hasidic melodic patterns and klezmer inflection into a concertante form. The original version asks a single soloist to alternate between clarinet and bass clarinet in the different sections; the composer also made a version without the two solo instruments and one without the clarinet in B flat.