Josef Tal was the grand old man of Israeli music. His music is based on the European tradition, in which he grew up and was educated, in Berlin, where his father ran the Jewish orphanage in Charlottenburg, his autobiography is called "The Rabbi's Son". He also studied there for four years at the Hochschule, which enjoyed an international reputation under Franz Schreker's direction. In 1934 he emigrated to Israel to start a new life and to help build a new culture. His six symphonies - the first was not written until 1952 - span a period of forty years, the span of a creative life. All of them are concise, works of concentration that do not lose themselves in ornamentation, and that seek to grasp a musical thought in its possible scope. Music of piercing expressivity.