1. Prelude: Calmo, Sospeso

Hear The Dybbuk

The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (1994) is the leading composition of the project Hear The Dybbuk – the essence of which is the performance of works which tie esthetics and the organization of  notes in a classical way with the traditional Jewish music. The initiator of the project is Marcin Malinowski, who is supported by the outstanding young performers of chamber music from Tricity (Gdańsk, Poland): Dorota Roszkowska violin, Ewa Kaszuba violin, Michał Piwowarczyk viola, Aleksandra Kuczewska cello, Joanna Bogusz piano

Notes from the composer (excerpts)

I always think of my great-grandfather praying, or fixing things, his pockets full of screws. I remember thinking, three of his children are dead; why does he still pray? Why does he still fix things? But we were taught that God had assigned that task of repairing the world to the Jewish people – Tikkun Olam. Incomprehensible.
About eight hundred years ago, Isaac the Blind – who was the greatest Kabbalist rabbi of Provence – dictated a manuscript saying that everything in the universe, all things and events, are products of  combinations of the Hebrew alphabet's letters.
The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind is a kind of epic, a history of Judaism. It has Abraham, exile, and redemption. The movements sound like they are in three of the languages spoken in almost 6,000 years of Jewish history: the first in Aramaic, the second in Yiddish, and the third in Hebrew. I never wrote it with this idea in mind, and only understood it when the work was finished. 
In the prelude, the music is like a celestial accordion, rising and Falling like breathing, like praying... like air... then the air is transformed into a pulse and heart. The whole first movement is a heartbeat that accelerates wildly... becoming frantic. It's built on a single chord, rotating like a monolith. The Quartet obsesses in eighth notes, the clarinet starts a huge line in long notes, but zooms in and is caught up in the gravitational spin. The forces of God and man, they never unite, but they do commune; you can hear the dybbuk and the shofar, searching for a revelation that is always out of reach.
The Second movement opens with a hesitating, irregular pulse; a skipping heartbeat, the rhythm of death. The violin and the clarinet hold forth in monologue at the same time, like those Bashevis Singer stories told in a poorhouse on a winter night. The same four notes, the same theme, playing in endless combinations. 
The String Quartet is an accordion in the prelude, a klezmer band in the second movement; now, in the third movement, it's a shepherd's magic flute. The last movement was written before all the others. It's an instrumental version of K'VAKARAT, a work that I wrote a few years ago for the Kronos Quartet and Cantor Misha Alexandrovich. In this final movement, hope is present but out of reach. There is a  question woven into the hardening, incense: why this task? Repairing a world forever breaking down, with pockets full of screws. The question remains unanswered in the postlude.

From the foreword of score The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (edited by Ytalianna Music Publishing Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company)

2. I. Agitato - Con Fuoco - Maestoso - Senza Misura, Oscilante

3. II. Teneramente - Ruvido - Presto

4. III. Calmo, Sospeso - Allegro Pesante

5. Postlude: Lento, liberamente

Marcin Malinowski – clarinetist, composer, born in 1986, has been bound up with Gdańsk (Poland) since 2006. He is the founder of the Rzeszów Klezmer Band (2004), the Meadow Quartet (2009) and the project Hear The Dybbuk (2011). The artist draws his inspiration from traditional Jewish music making successful experiments of exploring it at different planes starting from classical music, touching jazz and finally electronic music. The musician also takes part in projects in which sounds are interacting with pictures. Apart from studying at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk Marcin Malinowski has also mastered his skills in the class of prof. Jean-Marc Fessard in Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles.

He worked with such artists and bands, as Klaus Kugel, Tomas Dobrovolskis, Jarosław Bester, Jan Maksimovič, Piotr Baron, Tomasz Ziętek, Kamil Pater, Leonid Shinkarenko, Tomasz Sowiński, Uliana Horbachevska, Bester Quartet, NeoQuartet and many others.

Marcin Malinowski

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