GIORA FEIDMAN – EN

Giora Feidmans humble beginnings date back more than 70 years to his youth in Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina. There he is born on the 25th of March 1936 as the son of Jewish immigrants from Bessarabia (Moldavia / southern Ukraine). Music runs in his blood: His father is a musician, just like his grandfather.

As a child Feidman learns to play the clarinet and begins to make music with his father.
Together they perform at various festivals and parties. At the age of only 18, he is given the position of clarinetist at the Teatro Colon, the most renowned opera house in South America.

In 1957, at the age of 21, he leaves Buenos Aires. After a long and tedious passage, he arrives in Haifa to finally enter the “Promised Land”. Already in his pocket; a contract with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The deal was arranged by Paul Kletzki, the conductor of the orchestra making Feidman the youngest clarinetist ever to play with the ensemble. He has no time to rest as his rehearsals begin immediately. He even has his first solo appearance during his first week playing in the orchestra.

The clarinetist remains a faithful member of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for the next 18 years and becomes an essential part of their numerous world tours. He performs in almost all of the world’s major concert halls under some of the most prestigious conductors of our time, such as Leonard Bernstein, Karl Münch, Raffael Kubelik, John Barbirolli, and Eugene Ormandy, not to mention Zubin Mehta.

Feidman remains modest and has not earned fame as a noted orator. Instead, he rather lets his clarinet do the talking. Moreover, he functions as an ambassador of sorts, by building bridges between people and cultures. Together with members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he performed the world premiere, of Ora Bat Chaim’s composition “Love”. The performance was part of the ceremony to commemorate the millions of victims of the National Socialist regime and took place in the plenary hall of the German Federal Parliament in January 2000. In honor of his special achievements concerning the reconciliation between the Germans and the Jews, he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit with ribbon in 2001 in Berlin.

Today, the virtuoso Feidman is a personality of contemporary history. Henceforth, he was invited by Pope Benedict XVI to play at the vigil on World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany in August 2005 – in front of an audience of more than 800,000 people.