Ben-Haim/ Carmel Quartet/ Waterman - String Quintet in E minor / String Quartet No. 1

The composer Paul Ben-Haim made his early career in his native Munich. He emigrated to Palestine in 1933. His music mirrors his change of circumstance: The String Quintet (1919) - heard here in it's first recording - taps a rich vein of Straussian late Romanticism. The First String Quartet (1937) is coloured by middle-Eastern melisma and folk-rhythms. Israel's Carmel Quartet perform regularly in Israel and abroad. Violist Shuli Waterman is principal violist of the Tel Aviv Soloists.