Heart of the World is dedicated to the memory of Raymond Benjamin,

husband of Metuka Benjamin, a renowned educator both in Los Angeles

with the Stephen S. Wise Temple Schools and in Israel. Ray was a great lover

of music and strong supporter of Israel. I remember hime as remarkably humble

and highly educated.

The title of this piece comes from a Hebrew poem by

Avraham Ben Yitzhak called "Blessed are they that sow but do not reap".

Blessed are they who know

their hearts will cry out from the wilderness

and that quiet will blossom from their lips.

Blessed are these

for they will be gathered to the heart of the world...

The image of a thrown stone creating ripples in a pond preoccupied me, with its

associations of reverberation and disintegration. And in fact, the piece both begins

and ends with chords stuck in various repetitive patterns to evoke ripples. An even

more obvious theme is a nostalgia for the beauty and direct expression of Baroque

musical textures, evident in clear tonal structure and melodic decoration of textures.

In a quest for simplicity, a simple sad waltz in g minor dominates the entire work. The

piano develops this melody and turns it upside-down in a more impassioned middle

section. The violin interrupts several times with soloistic lines reminiscent of Vivaldi.

At the climax, the violin soars over a melodramatioc waltz variation until the music

ultimately disintegrates back into the ripples with which it began.

Heart of the World is approximately 11 minutes. It is available in two versions: a

work for violin solo and chamber orchestra, and a duo for violin and piano. The two

versions are not transcriptions as they differ in several important places both in

texture and structure.