Everything was fine until the missile landed at the airport.

Do I have your attention now? More about that in a bit.

May picked up where April left off, with another outstanding week in Las Palmas. This time, we had an all-orchestral program that truly tested the musicians in three stylistically different works. With the memories of an outstanding Bruckner’s Fourth, we dove into Brahms, Cruixent, and Tchaikovsky with fervor and energy.

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony has appeared several times during this 80^th birthday season. One of the first big works I ever conducted, it has stayed in my repertoire throughout my entire career. Although each orchestra, hall, and audience affects the nature of a performance, some basics have remained with me throughout my musical life.

With a family background rooted in the Russian tradition, I have always felt naturally inclined toward works from that part of the world. The biggest change in my approach has been, as regular readers of this blog know, to pay closer attention to structure, which can be particularly challenging in Tchaikovsky.

Due to its sprawling first two movements, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth requires the conductor to be particularly mindful of the overall arc of the piece. The various orchestral soloists, particularly the first horn, also play an important role in maintaining the architecture of this musical edifice.

Fortunately, the Canarians were up to the task. Everyone played brilliantly, and the ovation from the audience was clearly heartfelt. We began the concert with Brahms’s Tragic Overture, a work the orchestra had not played recently. They seemed delighted to reacquaint themselves with this masterpiece.

In the middle came Ferran Cruixent’s Cyborg, a piece I have been performing regularly over the past ten years. Taking its cue from science fiction novels, the work contains many unusual effects, including having the orchestra members sing and play a pre-recorded ringtone on their phones. Ferran is a truly gifted composer, and his music continues to explore unusual pathways.

Two-week stints are always welcome, providing opportunities for growth from one week to the next. I was also originally supposed to conduct in Jerusalem for two consecutive weeks, but an engagement with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis required me to revise that plan to a single week.

It had been more than thirty years since my last engagement in Israel. This long absence was not exactly by choice, as I explained in the last chapter of my book Leading Tones.

All my previous appearances had been with the Israel Philharmonic, which is based in Tel Aviv. This time, the invitation came from the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Their music director is the same Julian Rachlin who leads the ensemble I recently conducted in Kristiansand.

The travel situation was a bit dicey. A few days before we departed Las Palmas, several wildfires broke out in Israel. The Israeli government hinted that these may have been set on purpose, keeping the country on edge. However, firefighters managed to contain the blazes by the time of our arrival. We flew on the Sabbath, so fewer people were traveling and, much to my surprise, we got through customs, security, and immigration rather quickly.

Cindy and I had decided that since Sunday was a free day, we would take the opportunity to sightsee. When they say that you are going to visit Old Town, they mean the really old town. We could feel the sense of history in every step as we explored the birthplace of three religions. I got the impression that even with tensions high, a certain respect among communities still existed.

It was on that same day that an unexploded missile, sent courtesy of the Houthis, landed at Ben Gurion Airport. We did not learn of this until the evening in the form of an email warning us that our flight home was likely to be cancelled. Most U.S. and European carriers were shutting down operations for the next several days until things calmed down. Fortunately, we found an option on El Al, the Israeli-run airline, that could get us to Boston. I needed to get home to start opera rehearsals, so we were fortunate to get seats on that plane. Other travelers were unable to leave for a week or more.

Much of what I saw on that Sunday was familiar from my earlier trips. Visiting the marketplaces, the Western Wall, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I was struck by the sheer variety of traditions and values they represent. People yell at each other, then embrace as if nothing happened. Bartering skills come into play when shopping for anything. Mine are quite deficient, accounting for why I wound up with four huge slabs of halvah instead of four bite-size pieces, three of which I gifted to the orchestra.

We had three days of rehearsals to put together a program that seemed fine for an orchestra I had never worked with, although I had no idea what to expect. An American in Paris is a good test to assess the overall level of an ensemble. The read-through went very well, and I knew that they would have no problem with the Candide Overture and Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The first rehearsal ended with bursts of applause and a few bravos from the orchestra.

Then, we moved on to Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Eighth Symphony. Again, their sound was much more unified than I would have expected going into the rehearsal. As the day progressed, it was also becoming clear that the orchestra was there to work and make music at the highest possible level. We dug into details, both large and small. Each time I made a suggestion, they responded in quick order. I knew that something special was occurring.

By the second day, we were all much more relaxed. I am not one to talk a lot in rehearsal, and I kept it that way, other than a story or two that seemed appropriate for the moment. At this point, individual musicians were coming to see me in the dressing room, mostly to say how much they were enjoying our time together.

Meanwhile, Cindy was in photography heaven. This was her first trip to Israel, and as you can see, it made a huge impact visually, even though we did not venture outside of Jerusalem.

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Even before our arrival, I was wrestling with a decision. Since the October 7th attack, many of you have likely noticed yellow ribbons worn to show support for the return of the hostages being held by Hamas. With the Barber planned well before this situation evolved, I was torn about whether to say something at the concerts, as some of my colleagues have done.

After a few days, I was starting to grasp the complexity of the issues in Israel, and I felt compelled to talk about the need to bring the hostages home. Nothing can move in any direction until this has been accomplished.

Using the often-quoted phrase that the Adagio for Strings is “the saddest music ever written,” I explained the nature of the piece as an opportunity for reflective listening. With the Gershwin coming next, I expressed hope that we will “come out of the darkness and into the sunlight.”

The first performance was in Jerusalem and the second in Herzliya, a seaside city. Both concerts were sold out. The orchestra stayed in top form and perhaps even rose above that in their concentration and energy. Both audiences responded with rhythmic clapping which, in contrast to the European public, began almost immediately after the final notes were sounded.

It was time to go home. The entire five-week European trip was magnificent. This octogenarian felt young again.

My next assignment is an almost-eight-week stint leading Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Rather than break up the written train of thought, I will put it all together in next month’s journal.

See you then,

Leonard