- Gidon Kremer: “Mieczysław Weinberg: Sonatas for Violin” (ECM)
- Stéphane Degout, Simon Lepper: “Epic: Lieder & Balladen” (Harmonia Mundi)
- Anna Prohaska, La Folia Barockorchester, Robin Peter Müller: “Celebration of Life in Death” (Alpha)
There are several moments in the Torah when a figure, called on by God, answers that call with a single word: Hineni. It’s the word Abraham utters when God orders him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and the one he repeats when he’s stopped at the last minute. Moses says it, too, when he encounters the burning bush. In Hebrew, it means “here I am,” but it’s more than a bit of locational language. The “here I am” of hineni is a location of the self in temporal and physical space, as well as emotional, spiritual, and moral space. The word takes on the form of a leitmotif; if a character utters the phrase, it’s a sure sign they’re about to experience a profound change, usually via crisis. Leonard Cohen, who repeats the phrase on the opening track to his final album, “You Want It Darker,” might have described it as “a ritual response to an impossible event.”