Last update - 00:00 28/05/2007
A Tribute to Leonard Cohen / 'We are ugly but we have the music'
By Ben Shalev
"I take it back. Rabbi Leonard Cohen can be translated in rhyme." I received this text message from an acquaintance who loves Leonard Cohen's songs and knows them by heart, a few minutes after Saturday's performance "A Tribute to Leonard Cohen" at the Israel Festival. Two hours earlier he had been skeptical about the possibility of writing adequate Hebrew versions for Cohen's songs. The last time someone tried to do just this, while retaining the rhymes, the soul of the songs got lost, he said. But the fluent, musical and impolite translations of Kobi Meidan both surprised and delighted him.
The musical treatment Cohen's songs received at the hands of Daniel Solomon, the show's musical director, was not as delightful. As opposed to Meidan, Solomon was very polite. Cohen's songs of love and hate, his songs of passion and faith, cry out for adaptations with character: They can be minimalist, in which case it's better for them to go all the way and be totally exposed; and they can aspire to enrich Cohen's monotonous melodies, in which case they require surprising and interesting orchestration. For the most part Solomon chose an unsuccessful middle road, with caressing adaptations based on the keyboard, which dulled the sting of the songs and failed to express their directness and their poetic dimension.
Six singers performed during the evening, if we don't count Meidan himself, who joined singer Abigail Rose for one song, but sang almost in a whisper, so it was hard to hear him. Several of the participants - Eran Zur, Ivri Lider and Shila Pherber - managed to enliven the songs somewhat, but only Shlomo Shaban totally fulfilled the evening's promise. His renditions of "The Story of Isaac" and "Take This Waltz," on piano alone, were sharp and passionate, both stormy and vulnerable. In "The Story of Isaac" one could even detect Shaban's desire to subvert the song in response to the terrible situation it describes. It's a shame that the renditions in the respectable and uninspired show reminded one of a line from "Chelsea Hotel No. 2," although with a meaning totally different from the original: "Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music."
"A Tribute to Leonard Cohen," performed at the Israel Festival. Narrator and translator of the songs: Kobi Meidan. Musical director: Daniel Solomon. Participants: Eran Zur, Abigail Rose, Shlomi Shaban, Shila Pherber, Ivri Lider, Daniel Solomon. Jerusalem Theater, May 26.