New Music in Palestine

Extract

Interest in music must be greater in Palestine than in any other country in the world, for where else do you find a community of little more than half a million (some 70–75 per cent, of Palestine's one and a half million inhabitants belong to oriental communities) having at their service a fully equipped symphony orchestra and opera company (with an orchestra of its own), and a broadcasting station with yet another symphony orchestra at its command? Orchestral and chamber music may be heard in the towns almost any day of the week, and the rural communities are not only regularly visited by artists from the three major towns—Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and Haifa—but have also a forty-piece orchestra of their own, meeting for a couple of concerts and for rehearsals once every month, with the members coming from all parts of the country.