Israela Margalit

Israela Margalit
Born	Haifa, Israel
Education	Case Western University
Notable works	The Well-Tempered Bach
Notable awards	Emmy nomination Honorary Mention Best Play NY Film & TV festival gold medal NEA Media Awards British Music Industry award, Best CD (Korngold)
Spouse	Lorin Maazel Paul Rauch
Children	Ilann Maazel Fiona Maazel

Israela Margalit is a concert pianist, recording artist, playwright and television writer.

Career

Musical career

Margalit was born in Haifa, Israel. She studied piano and began performing in Israel at age thirteen. She studied at conservatories in Tel Aviv, Paris and Munich before performing with fifty major orchestras worldwide. She became a concert pianist and performed for 50 major orchestras around the world, conducted by Lorin Maazel. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/korngold-piano-trio-schoenberg-verklärte-nacht Gramophone selected her CD of Korngold Piano Trio and Piano and Violin Sonata for EMI as Editor’s Choice, saying "A tremendously fine performance... Recommended as first choice among available recordings...It's an absolute must…" http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/music/classical-cd-choice-6314237.html The London Evening Standard reviewed her CD of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No 2 with the London Symphony Orchestra under conductor Barry Wadsworth as "stately beautiful…One plays like this in one’s dreams." A New York Times music critic gave a mixed review of her performance at Alice Tully Hall, writing that "while Miss Margalit's cultured pianism was never less than correct and well mannered, she politely declined to turn these pieces into the sort of powerfully compelling individual conceptions these composers obviously intended them to be." The reviewer of Classicstoday wrote, "Disc 2… finds Margalit hitting a home run in Schumann’s concerto, playing with the perfect combination of impetuousness and poetry." http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-5568/ She toured widely, playing in the Americas, Europe and Asia. She played with numerous orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the American Big Five, the Israel Philharmonics, the The London Symphony, and the London Philharmonic. She recorded for EMI, Universal Classics and Jazz, Black Box, Chandos, Resonance, Decca and Koch International.

Writing career

According to one account, Margalit became a writer by accident, when she spoke to concert audiences about the backstory of the music she had been playing. That morphed into a one-hour television program in Germany about Clara Schumann, which achieved high ratings. She turned to writing plays, often about music and musicians as well as romance. Her play Night Blooming Jasmine focused on ethnic strife in northern Israel. Her 3 O’Clock in Brooklyn looked at romantic issues in modern New York City. In New York City, she was friends with playwright Arthur Miller and his wife. She said:

I learned the things I shouldn’t do by watching a million plays... Arthur (Miller) told me that in the first five minutes of any play you should know what the conflict is all about.

— Israela Margalit

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/style/02iht-chifilm_ed3_.html?pagewanted=all

in 2015 she became the founding Artistic Director of politiKos 2015, the only (and maybe the first) New York political theater festival, presenting work by celebrated and emerging playwrights and poets, with performers from all walks of life.http://www.gardenstatejournal.com/content/talking-politiks-nycs-first-ever-politikos-theatre-festival--9037.html

http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Horse-Trade-Theater-Group-to-Present-Israela-Margalits-GET-ME-A-GUY-717-84-20140617 On June 17, 2014, Brosawayworld.com wrote, "Her play Trio was premiered in Moscow and became a six-year smash hit in the Russian capital as well as in St. Petersburg, Kiev and throughout Russia and the Ukraine. Trio has had an Ovation-recommended production in Los Angeles, and an award-winning production at the Pecks Theater Festival in Hungary. Her plays Night Blooming Jasmine, 3 O'clock in Brooklyn, and First Prize, were premiered in New York to audience and critical acclaim. Her television shows have been shown in more than twenty countries, including a series with Sir Peter Ustinov, and specials for Germany's ZDF, ARD, Transtel/Deutsche Welle in association with PBS. They received an EMMY Nomination, a GOLD MEDAL at the NY Film & TV Festival, two NEA Media Awards, and the Long Island Film Festival Certificate of Merit (Finalist). She wrote a TV bible for a 100-episode series about Pushkin for Russia Channel 1/RWS, and served as story consultant to Columbia Tristar."

Her play Beethoven, The Prodigy, The Titan was broadcast on the A&E Channel, and was chosen to be displayed permanently at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York. She wrote The Mozart Mystique and Celebrating Haydn which were shown in countries worldwide; her play The Well-Tempered Bach was nominated for an Emmy award. Her full-length plays Night Blooming Jasmine, 3 O’clock in Brooklyn and Presumed Guilty were produced Off-Broadway. Her short play On the Bench won an Honorary Mention Best Play in the 14th annual New York 15-Minute Play Festival. Trio explored romantic themes; a review in the Santa Monica Daily Press described it as a "must-see" for those who like romantic drama, "immortal music", and Jane Austen, and that it was "filled with pithy comments and starchy 19th century speechifying." http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/theater-review-trio-53629.html The epoch times reviewer wrote about Trio," A play that plucks your heart strings — legato one moment and a staccato the next. Each scene seamlessly transitions into another as the audience rides the highs and lows. A surprisingly timeless period piece." http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/theater-review-trio-53629.html The reviewer of Socal.com write, "Trio" is beautifully written, replete with intelligent, witty and droll dialogue. In particular, the epigrams, on subjects such as love and lust, passion and performance, even Oscar Wilde could not have bettered. The fluidity and brilliance of the writing is astonishing. The music adds richness and complexity to an already diverse drama. "Trio" isn't simply a record of the past – it speaks to contemporary audiences about music and marriage." A Los Angeles Times theater critic wrote that Trio was liked by Russian audiences but that its "clanking script" at the Hollywood premiere "merely inspires head-scratching". In contrast, theater critic Sarah Goodrum found the play to be a "delicate balance between history and creative risk-taking" and found it to be "wholly successful." In 2011, her loosely autobiographical play First Prize explored the darker side of the classical music world, which she portrayed as "sordid and soul-destroying," according to one review. http://newyork.nearsay.com/nyc/upper-west-side/arts-culture-new-play-first-prize-hits-right-notes newyork.nearby.com wrote" "Last year, the acclaimed film Black Swan offered a worms-eye view of the competitive world of ballet. kef productions sheds a similar light on the cutthroat world of classical music with First Prize, the world premiere play by renowned concert pianist and award-winning writer Israela Margalit"

Personal life

Margalit married Israeli pianist Yahli Wagman in the early 1950'. Later she married Lorin Maazel in 1969 and the couple had two children. During this time, she stopped performing concert recitals and she studied at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Her third marriage was to legendary soap opera executive producer Paul Rauch. Rauch died in 2012.

Margalit's children are Ilann Maazel, an award-winning civil rights lawyer and a pianist, and Fiona Maazel, an award-winning novelist and creative writing professor.