Since I interviewed Alex and Daniel Gurfinkel, 15-year-old twins, who had an international clarinet career at an early age, I have often wondered what happened to the pair of wonder children from Ashdod – whether the wonder was preserved in adulthood, or passed away with age, as often happens Times for young lifts, who start their careers earlier than usual.
A response to this will be given from Thursday this week in the new concert series of the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon Lezion, where they will perform “Remembering Benny Goodman”, conducted by John Axelrod in an Israeli premiere, a work written at their request by their friend, composer Yevgeny Levitas, as a salute to clarinetist Considered the Jewish wizard of the swing era in American music. Being identical twins, so as not to get entangled with the issue of who said what, they appear in the interview as one man.
From the salute to Goodman it can be concluded that the two are multi-styled. “To diversify, we maneuver between classical music, jazz and klezmer music, although classical is for us at the base of everything,” they say. “I mean, even if the current piece has a lot of jazzy aspects, with all the improvisations that Goodman’s greatness was in, it’s wrapped in a classic style, like the one who started it.”
As identical twins, until recently they barely touched each other and called their duo “Duo Gurfinkel”. Now, they are trying to side with him the “alone”. Alex was admitted to the theater orchestra in Minster, a twin city of Rishon Lezion, not far from the border with the Netherlands while Daniel will start playing in an orchestra in the city of Gyor, in northwestern Hungary, in August.
When asked what caused the separation of powers they took on, they reply: “It comes from the circumstances of life, when in Corona each of us found himself on a different wave. We got to that, when the plague made us look at things a little differently, though we both continue in Europe “We came straight from the army to Germany, where we studied at the University of Berlin for a bachelor’s and master’s degree. In contrast, our father, Michael, is the first clarinetist in the Rishon Lezion Orchestra, where he has played for about 30 years, almost since immigrating from Ukraine during the Gulf War.”
In fact, they are three generations of clarinets, when their grandfather, Arkady, now 93, established the dynasty as the principal clarinetist in an orchestra in Dniprovsk, Ukraine, after he began playing while serving in the Soviet army. He caught up with the clarinetist in love with their father, whose first instrument was a piano inspired by his pianist mother. On the other hand, Lilia, the mother of the two, who was in the Kinneret Soviet Union in the orchestra and at the cliff of times after immigrating to Israel, moved here to be a beautician. At her beauty salon, Valeria, their older sister, works with her, who at one point gave up the clarinet, “after not really connecting to the instrument.”
The twins are the first sabras in their cultured family. After they began playing the flute at the age of six, their grandfather Arkady brought on their ninth birthday a clarinet for Alex and a clarinet – for Daniel and spontaneously he harnessed them for a first playing lesson on the instrument. The legend of the Gurfinkel family says that the next day their space in Ashdod was filled with the sounds of delicate clarinet. “It was natural for us,” they note. “Ever since we were born, we’ve heard the sounds of a clarinet, the instrument that will become a part of us.”
For about two years they learned to play from their grandfather. And where was their father, Michael, the orchestra player at the time? – “After he tried to teach our sister and she retired from playing after all he had invested in her, he took it not easy.”
As children of wonder, their first appearance with the Philharmonic was at the age of 12: “Dad brought us to audition with Zubin Mehta. He heard us and a year later he invited us to play in the ‘Concert in Jeans’ series. As children, we were very excited, but the maestro hugged us and supported us. “We’re together, let’s have fun,” he told us. “It was quite stressful to play in front of a full hall, but we flowed with it, as they say, when the main thing is to enjoy the music.”
Since the memorable encounter with the maestro they have won an award in an international chamber music competition in France and pretty much have circled the globe in their concerts. “To date, we have performed in 40 countries and we have already exchanged several passports,” they say. “While it is a great honor to play in prestigious halls such as the Gwendolyn House in Leipzig, the Bolshoi Opera House in Moscow, or the Vatican in Rome, there is nothing like the Israeli audience, which always welcomes us warmly.”
But somehow they are both engaged without being Jewish. Christina, the fiancée of Daniel, a fashion designer and photographer, who is from Siberia, heard him at a concert in Berlin and since then love has blossomed between them while Sylvia, Alex’s fiancée, who is from Romania, is a pianist, whom he met while studying in Berlin. Another duo on the way, he hints. Meanwhile the audience is invited this week to savor their playing with their father’s orchestra. Everything remains in the family, you can understand them.