Baruch Berliner
Baruch Berliner was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel, then Palestine, in 1942. His parents fled from the Nazi Regime in Germany in 1937. His mother, Charlotte, who grew up in Vienna, was a pianist, singer and dancer and his father Shabtai was a lawyer and businessman, who participated as a pioneer in the development of the agriculture in Palestine long before the state of Israel was existing.
Baruch, as a kid, grew up on the Viennese culture, on the sounds of Johann Strauss, Franz Lehar and Emmerich Kalman. In his youth he learned with Oeden Partos, one of the great Israeli composers, who was the director of the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv and winner of the Israel Prize.
At the age of 12 he left Israel to Berlin with his parents for a few months for summer vacation, to demand back the fortune that the nazis have robbed from the family. It took some time to get the fortune back and the “summer vacation” extended from a few months to 35 years.
During this period, he finished school in Berlin, Academic Studies in theoretical physics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and got there a PhD in mathematics. He was a Senior Actuary at the Swiss Reinsurance Company in Zurich, which is the largest reinsurance company in the world, and an invited lecturer at different Universities all over the world. He published two scientific books and about seventy papers in actuarial studies and finance. His book “The Limits of Insurability of Risks” became a bestseller and was published in several languages.
Baruch Berliner returned with his family in 1990 to Israel and worked until retirement in 2007 as a Senior Research Associate and as the Chairman of the Scientific Committee at the Erhard Insurance Center at the Faculty of Management of the Tel-Aviv University and as a judge at the “Berliner Prize”.
When writing his thesis for his doctorate in mathematics, he went down on his leisure time to the Lake of Zurich. While walking, a lot of melodies came up to his mind that he wrote down in his note book.
In 1992 he met in Israel the excellent musician Nachum Slutzker and returned to intensive musical study. He showed Nachum his note book and this was actually the trigger for composing the symphonic poem “Genesis”. In the thirty years of cooperation Baruch and Nachum became close friends. In addition Nachum became the producer advisor and many times also the initiator of diversified joint projects.
The creation of “Genesis” means for Berliner the realization of a dream.
He succeeded to interlace most important two desires to his heart: Faith and music.
“Genesis” for narrator and orchestra was already performed in 19 countries. In every country the narrator read the Biblical text in the local language since the Bible is the best seller of all times that was translated into about 700 languages.
Here is a list of Baruch Berliner’s compositions:
- The symphonic poem “Genesis” for narrator and orchestra.
- The symphonic poem “The Binding of Isaac” for narrator, tenor, baritone and orchestra.
- The symphonic poem Jacob’s Dream for narrator, baritone and orchestra.
- The oratoria “Abraham” for narrator, men’s choir/mixed choir and orchestra.
The symphonic poem Jacob’s Dream gave Berliner the inspiration for composing four concerts that were played with a lot of success by excellent and world famous soloists:
The concerto for violin and orchestra “Jacob’s Dream”, the concerto for viola and orchestra “Jacob’s Dream”, the concerto for cello and orchestra “Jacob’s Dream”, the concerto for clarinet and orchestra “Jacob’s Dream”.
Moreover Berliner composed seven South American dances and waltzes, all for a symphony and chamber orchestra,
seven quintets for piano and string quartet and “musical jokes” for piano, for piano and clarinet and for two guitars.
The movie “The Address on the Wall”, uses as film music the fourth part of “Genesis” (Cain and Abel) and ends up with the prayer “El male Rachamim (Oh my merciful Lord)”, which was composed together with Serge Krutsenko and Nachum Slutzker.
Berliner has moreover written about one thousand poems, seven hundred proverbs and some dozens of short stories, mostly in German and partly in English. The poems in German were so far partly printed in six books. When retuning to Israel he wrote for his beloved wife Ruhama over three thousand love poems in Hebrew, part of which are already printed in seven books.