Deutsche grammophon presents a world premire recording. Louis Lewandowski, conductor, choral director and organist at Berlin’s Oranienburger Strasse synagogue, was a pioneer of modern Jewish liturgical music, whose reforms led to the creation of a new liturgy for Jewish synagogue services, a liturgy that combined classical Western music with traditional synagogue singing and restored an important role to organ music introducing a Romantic style influenced by Mendelssohn, whose family fostered Lewandowski’s career.

This first complete recording of his 1879 masterwork is conducted by Andor Izsák, who encountered the historic psalm-singing tradition in his youth as organist at Budapest’s Great Synagogue in the Dohány-utca. The performance uses Izsák’s 1994 edition, based on the long-lost original manuscript.