"...with purity and light..." is a piano concerto I composed in 2015, commissioned by the Israel Symphony Orchestra. It was premiered by them on July 21, 2016, with Amit Dolberg at the piano and Sascha Goetzel conducting.
My approach to composing begins like that of an architect sketching the outline of a new house before filling in the details. I start by defining a structure, dividing a specific time frame into sections and subsections. This structural outline is built upon the mathematical principle of fractals, which incorporates the concepts of self-similarity and recursion. I have used this method since 2003, applying the same algorithm, though the specific numbers vary with each composition. Once the outline is set, I begin adding sound to give the form life and meaning. In my instrumental music, there are no extra-musical motivations—each sound is there because of the sound that came before it or after it.
The title for this piece, "...with purity and light...", comes from a poem by Rumi. I found it after searching through texts close to my heart, looking for a phrase that met a very specific set of criteria: four words, with the first being four letters long, the second six letters, the third three, and the fourth five. These numbers reflect the time-fractal ratios I used in the composition—4, 6, 3, and 5.
The drum of the realization of the promise is beating,
We are sweeping the road to the sky.
Your joy is here today, what remains for tomorrow?
The armies of the day have chased the army of the night,
Heaven and earth are filled with purity and light.
Oh! joy for he who has escaped from this world of perfumes and color!
For beyond these colors and these perfumes, there are other colors in the heart and the soul.
Oh! joy for this soul and this heart who have escaped the earth of water and clay,
Although this water and this clay contain the hearth of the philosophical stone.
In this piece, I sought to embody the purity and light Rumi speaks of, infusing both the structure and the sound with this sense of transcendence and clarity.
As Professor Oded Zehavi of Opus Magazine noted in his review, the concerto's world premiere "moved me and awakened in me many thoughts. It is a wise piece, complicated and very communicative." Zehavi goes on to commend the work’s originality and the orchestration’s depth, calling it "one of the best that I have heard" and likening it to the works of Ravel and Messiaen, while acknowledging its distinctiveness. He praised the rich, gripping tones produced by the orchestra, as well as the surprising melodic lines that serve the aesthetic and expressive goals of the piece.
Elkana’s orchestration, according to Zehavi, is "original, deep and thought provoking," creating "spectacular sound combinations" that fully realize the piece's expressive aims. The choice of sounds was critical in capturing the work’s emotional resonance, which, for Zehavi, “vaguely communicates” with other great works of contemporary music but stands as an original and fascinating creation in its own right.
This feedback reflects my intention behind the piece: to craft a work that engages both intellectually and emotionally, inviting listeners to experience a profound, layered exploration of sound, structure, and meaning.