One Of World’s Great Pianists Opens Concert At Carnegie Hall With Israeli National Anthem

One of the great young pianists of the world opened his concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall with a performance of “HaTikvah” (The Hope), Israel’s national anthem.

Kevin Chen, 18, who won first prize at the prestigious Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv this year, in addition to having won first prize at the (Concours de Genève, the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest, Hungary and first prize in the Hilton Head International Piano Competition, was scheduled to play Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat Major, Op. 35, No. 6, Twelve Etudes By Frederic Chopin, Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 64, “White Mass,” and Liszt’s Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este and Réminiscences de Norma.

Chen, who has performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Camerata, according to Canada’s National Arts Centre. Chen is also a composer, has performed with a range of other orchestras and won numerous awards.

Watch: Kevin Chen opens his concert at @carnegiehall with Hatikva, Israel’s anthem, paying tribute to the Israeli victims murdered and those who are being held hostage by Hamas.

Thank you. pic.twitter.com/kQzfagaqK0

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) October 20, 2023

To see the staggering talent of the young pianist, watch his performance here, from the Rubenstein competition:

The Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition originated in 1973. The legendary pianist himself attended the first two competitions. Numerous international stars have won the competition.

The English lyrics to “HaTikvah” are:

As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,
With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,
Then our hope – the two-thousand-year-old hope – will not be lost: To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

The lyrics were adapted from the poem, “Tikvateynu” (“Our Hope”) written in 1877 by poet Naphtali Herz Imber.  In 1944, Czech Jews spontaneously sang “HaTikvah” at the entry to the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chamber and were beaten by SS guards, according to a Sonderkommando at the camp. “Their voices grew subdued and tense, their movements forced, their eyes stared as though they had been hypnotized… Suddenly a voice began to sing. Others joined in, and the sound swelled into a mighty choir. They sang first the Czechoslovak national anthem and then the Hebrew song ‘Hatikvah,’” he recalled.

A BBC recording recorded five days after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp  Bergen-Belsen showed Jewish survivors singing the anthem.

The song became Israel’s unofficial national anthem when Israel was reestablished in 1948.