Press

"Raphael's virtuosic, witty and sophisticated performance of Prokofiew's dynamic Third Piano Concerto seemed to inspire conductor and orchestra with stunning results."
(Los Angeles Times on his performance at Royce Hall with Mehli Mehta conducting)

"James Raphael is a world-class-pianist, a triumphant artist, a mesmerizing talent and he deserves a standing ovation wherever he plays." (New York Times)

"His mental mastery and technique are one. This is great brilliance."
(La fibre Belgique, Brussels, Belgium)

"He can be brutal as well as infinitely delicate and as light as an elf. Force, finesse, control of contrasts: a pianist to remember!" (Le Soir, Brussels, Belgium) "If Arthur Rubinstein was alive and present he would qualify as unequaled the concert that James Raphael gave last night."
(El Norte, N Monterey, Mexico)

"...evident sympathy for both the contemplative and the impassioned sides of music."
(Fanfare Magazin on a recent CD released, Nov.—Dec. 1993)

"It was a great awe-inspiring moment when the deeply emotionally moved public spontaneously rose to their feet while Mr. Raphael played the final part of his 13 HATIKVA Variations, and sang. A moment that got under your skin." (Badische Zeitung, Freiburg, Germany, on the occasion of the 47th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel)

"We can appreciate Mr. Raphael's incredible technique in the last part of his recital with Bach, Mozart, and his all Liszt pyrotechnical finale.' (Part of the foreword of the Vatican Radio Musical Magazine, Rome, March-April '96)

James Raphael is an intensively convinced and convincing pianist whose compositions and interpretations provide an intense interior adventure. An endoscope of the richest sensations, a spectrum of feelings from the tenderest of moments to the heaviest of pathos, tone structures from fine ornamental filigree to hail showers of sound."
(Badische Zeitung, Freiburg, Germany)

You said earlier that the Mourner's Kaddish has also inspired purely instrumental compositions.

Yes. For example, there's a wonderful piano work titled Kaddish by the composer James Raphael. Raphael is not as well known as Bernstein or Gottlieb, but his Jewish roots run deep: his maternal great-grandfather, the kabbalistic rabbi Shlomo Moussaieff, helped finance the building of the Bukharian quarter of Jerusalem and was believed to have been a maker of miracles. Raphael himself grew up in England in the 1950s and later studied with Arthur Rubinstein and Nadia Boulanger. His Kaddish was composed after his visit to the Salzburg Jewish cemetery in 1996. He would later write: "I leave this composition as a small stone upon your tombs, a musical Kaddish prayer for you [the cemetery] and my own beloved departed mother, Henriette Raphael."

Musically, Raphael takes the listener on a journey from mournful lament (Track 5) through the pain of the Nazi persecution, with a reference to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (Track 6); to, finally, a resolution in the Romantic piano style of Franz Liszt-the vision of the eternal covenant embodied by souls being ushered up to heaven (Track 7). As Raphael explains, it's as if "souls who left their earthly bodies in this piece of holy ground [are] being elevated toward heaven by a myriad of Kaddishes uttered by faithful families."

THE KNIFE AND ME

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Theme & Variations on the Israeli anthem, Hatikva (Hope ... - KZread

It Might Be Quentin Tarantino's Last Movie - The Best Tarantino Movie Yet. James Moussaieff Raphael: 13 Variations and a 5 voice Grand Fugue for piano solo.