“Their music is southern, suffused with brilliant light, like the air of the Mediterranean lands, translucent, striving for clarity—”

This description of the “Mediterranean style” in music comes from the eminent critic Max Brod, and it applies to varying degrees to the three sacred services featured here by Israeli composers Paul Ben-Haim, Marc Lavry, and Yehezkel Braun. The popularity of their music owes much to the novelty of exotic sounds, idioms, and reflections of the land of Israel and of the wider Jewish orient, all finely crafted in the beloved forms of the Western classical tradition. This is spiritual music that easily transports the heart and senses to the Holy Land. All three services were commissioned and premiered in the United States.