Setting Ernest Bloch's darkly imposing Hebraic rhapsody Schelomo(Solomon) amid the more classical surroundings of Mozart and Mendelssohn brought a disparate feel to Friday's concert by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under principal conductor Gerhard Markson.

Though the balances were consistently satisfactory in Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream and Mozart's G minor symphony, a sense of continuity and connectedness between strings and winds was lacking - perhaps because the strings were more numerous than either composer envisaged.

The intra-orchestral dialogue seemed finally to develop, however, in the last played movement of the incidental music, Dance of the Clowns.

It was, however, the awesome Schelomo that dominated the evening's experience, not least because of the impassioned and oratorical solo playing of Israeli-born cellist Inbal Megiddo.

Composed in 1916, Bloch's sternly expressionistic 20-minute tableau might be seen as an assertively devout response to Kol Nidrei, the altogether milder Jewish essay for cello and orchestra by Christian composer Bruch.

Megiddo's tone production may have been more at the chamber-music than the symphonic level, and the orchestral trappings might sometimes have been more subdued. But her line was so imbued with a quasi-vocal physicality, her empathy with the music's religious ardour so certain, and her expression so untrammeled, that nothing could come between the artist and her audience.

- Andrew Johnstone, The Irish Times: July 09, 2007

A promising event at Tuily Hall last October 29th provided a showcase for a talented young cellist, Inbal Megiddo, in a diverse program of works by De Falla, Jan Radzynski, Tchaikovsky and Bartok. Ms. Megiddo, 25 years old, is Israeli, and  according to her extensive biography is very much a citizen of the world.

...With such credentials it was not at all surprising to discover that Ms. Megiddo plays her instrument very well indeed. She has a warm, lustrous communicative way with the two major works her roster (the Radzynski and the Tchaikovsky particularly). Her dexterity is considerable; her bowing curvaceous; her intonation accurate; and her sound, if not of Rostropovian hugeness and girth, projected well in all corners of the moderate— sized auditorium in question.

…she was brilliantly in her element in the Radzynski Concerto (which has its premiere in 1990 and has now been taken up by other Israeli artists—Zvi Plesser, Uzi Weisel, Un Vardi, Hillel Zori and now Ms. Megiddo). Radzynski (b. 1050 in Poland) later settled in Israel before studying at Yale of Jacob Druckman and Krzytof Penderecki— who considered Radzynski his favorite pupil. The Concerto is effectively cast in a single movement with different moods and sections. It opens with a short and quiet introduction that leads to an impassioned allegro where the soloist plays a one— note rhapsodic recitando motif. Several sections of varying character follow: a lyrical melody woven into a colorful tapestry (played by a piano in a high register and a glockenspiel); a very short grazioso dance in double metre that for a moment sounds almost like a gallant gavotte; and a mysterious slow section that leads to an expressive and intense melody played by the soloist in the highest register of the low C string. The resourceful orchestration calls for double winds, two trumpets, percussion, piano and strings and the musical message is very lyrical and intense. Ms. Megiddo’s sympathetic, nay, masterful, delivery was handsomely supported by David Stern leading a spirited pickup ensemble of Ms. Megiddo’s friends and colleagues calling itself “The Yale Players” (its personnel drawn from the ranks of students and former students at the Yale School of Music).

Likewise the popular Tchaikovsky Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 33, heard as usual in the much more effective arrangement by Wilhelm Karl Fitzenhagen. Ms. Megiddo’s heartfelt delivery made considerable most of the emotional and coloristic incarnations through which Tchaikovsky puts his charming, lightweight tema, and the ensemble in tow gave punctilious support (despite a few telltale signs that suggested only minimal rehearsal to tidy things up).

Ostensibly, more time was needed (and perforce spent) for the difficult Bartok Divertimento, one of the Hungarian master’s late period creations (its vintage year, 1939, corresponds with the great Second Violin Concerto of a year later, and the sublime Concerto for Orchestra of 1943). I have nothing but praise for the spirited, committed orchestral playing (many ravishing solo “licks” made this listener smile contentedly), and Stern (who, though unmentioned in the accompanying program bio, is one of Isaac’s sons) obviously knew the score inside and out, and imparted his wishes to the musicians with clear, purposeful gestures.

- Harris Goldsmith, New York Concert Review

The cellist Inbal Megiddo invokes Manuel de Falla in Manhattan

To begin to hold the cello at age two and give a first public concert at three is not guarantee that talent will necessarily flow, or that the future will be full of laurels, but it does encourage musical feeling, awareness and thought to put down roots and grow together.  Last Monday in Lincoln Center in New York Inbal Megiddo gave one of those concerts that not only reflects and synthesizes an intense musical career, but also confirms that in these dark times music can become the best consolation, and that some interpreters have a gift to make dark and luminous sounds crystallize with an astonishing clarity.  In the "Suite popular espanola", in which the cellist, born 25 years ago in Israel, was accompanied by Benjamin Verdery on guitar, Inbal Megiddo not only invoked Manuel de Falla in a tomblike Manhattan, as if they had shared mornings and afternoons in Cadiz, but also in "El pano moruno" , "Asturiana", and "Nana" found extraordinary sounds of a classical and contemporary Falla, "Spanish," if such a musical texture exists, and popular.  It's not that she is overly faithful to the composer, it's that when Megiddo embraces the cello with her whole body, with the security and firmness of someone who knows where she wants to go (what she wants to achieve), and knows in her right arm that she has the means to achieve it, the instrument lets itself be tamed.  Megiddo plays from memory and with elegance, without breaking for a moment the drawing of her body in order to extract the essence from the wood and the strings, without anyone noticing the effort in her gestures, repeated to satiation but which seem to have been just invented, sustaining the sound and the silence, as Daniel Barenboim has shown before.

…  Inbal Megiddo debuted Monday in Alice Tully Hall with the Yale Players, under the baton of David Stern.  The composer Jan Radzynaki attended the performance of his passionate and at times disturbing "Concerto for cello and orchestra", which was applauded by an auditorium that in spite of its good acoustics lacked the necessary arrangement of theaters like Carnegie Hall that the program cried out for.  The orchestra, made up for the most part by young women, gave proof of its very high level with the "Divertimento for String Orchestra"  of Bartok, bevore the solist returned to take command with the same eloquence, but with no more vanity than her own intimate conviction, the Rococco Variations of Tchaikovsky.

But it was in the "Kaddish" of Joachim Stuchewsky, the prayer that a son could offer before his father's tomb and that Megiddo played alone, "in memory of Issac Stern, the victims of the Twin Towers and the anniversary of the assassination of Issac Rabin, with the mute orchestra around her, when the connection between public and performer rose to its highest point.

- Alfonso Armada, ABC Madrid

Israeli Cellist, Arab Pianist Reach a Musical Summit
The partnership between the Israeli cellist Inbal Megiddo and the Israeli Arab pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar is a promising one. On Thursday at the University of Maryland's Smith Center, the young musicians played works of Boccherini, Shostakovich, J.S. Bach, Part and de Falla, pairing intensity with an awareness of stylistic distinctions as keenly drawn between composers as within movements. After lending a mellow luster to Boccherini's rather placid Sonata No. 6, Megiddo and Ashkar really got going in Shostakovich's Sonata, Op. 40. The piano's percussive hammer strokes met head on with the music's razor-sharp contrasts of high and low registers. Textures of empty desolation between these extremes of pitch reflected musically the vast reaches of the composer's homeland. Finely etched in performance, these bittersweet scenes peaked in the bite of the finale's contrapuntal parody. Bach's Gamba Sonata in D was rendered with regal dignity and intimate grace, leading to the evening's high-water mark: the whispered fragility of Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel" -- so moving that listeners delayed applause. This celestial stillness, unfortunately, was soon dispelled by the earthy gusto of de Falla's "Suite Populaire Espagnole."

- Cecelia Porter, The Washington Post : Jan 11, 2003

Cellist adds refreshing energy to recital
Inbal Megiddo & Gregory Shifrin, Cello and Piano Recital
Targ Ein Kerem Music Center, January 11, 2002

There was something aesthetically appealing about Inbal Megiddo’s cello playing in her Friday afternoon recital with pianist Gregory Shifrin, part of the ‘Music Skylight” series.

The two presented the local premiere of Hana Levi’s “Kina.” a piece composed in commemoration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The work, a sincerely moving and communicative piece, was performed with self-identification and warmth.

Also presented was Shostakovich’s Sonata op. 40, in which Megiddo displayed intense lyrical expression — even more than the composer commonly indulges in. Always careful not to over-emphasize the piece’s ironic overtones, she added some refreshing playful energy.

Megiddo then seemed to identify naturally with Boccherini’s habitual lightheartedness in his Sonata in A major. Her war, sonorous tone and effortlessly flowing passages rendered good service to Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 102/1 and de Falla’s popular Spanish Suite.

Finally, a display of well-polished virtuosity was circumspectly reserved for Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody, as an encore.

Shifrin supported her sensitively and attentively at the piano.

- Ury Eppstein, The Jerusalem Post: Jan 11, 2002

“Megiddo's solos soared with a pleasing blend of soul and poetry. The highlight of the evening.”

- Singapore Straits Times

Megiddo uses talent to benefit service organizations
“Music sweetly flowed last night from the hands of a prodigy who used her talents to benefit New Haven youth .. Megiddo and the orchestra attacked their entrances with force and assertion…coloring the familiar themes with dynamic and shape. Megiddo shined in the third movement, her vibrato widening and her bow sinking into the string, drawing forth beautiful sound.”

- Jonathan Litt, Yale Daily News

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