I’ve been living with the new Kim Kashkashian recording entitled Neharót for some time now, and find its title track Neharót Neharót (by the Israeli composer Betty Olivero, b.1954) to be one of the most affecting new pieces of music that I’ve encountered in the past decade. I liken its first impact on me to that of Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral, now one of the most-performed pieces of contemporary music in America – visceral, deeply touching, and subtly haunting. Neharot stays with you for some time, not the least because it succeeds in transporting the listener to a place outside of their normal experience, and, I dare say, out of their time as well. It’s a timeless piece of music. Kashkashian also produces a remarkably vocal sound on her viola – an instrument which is often overlooked in favor of the cello for emulating the range of the human voice, but which I think takes the place in the register of a great mezzo – capable of stratospheric heights, but more at home in the middle-to-upper range and with subtle imperfections in the tone production that make the timbre reach more deeply into the heartstrings. Speaking of voices, the Neharot features recorded voices of professional singers (singing songs of Kurdish and North African origin or derivation) which interplay with the solo viola. The added layer that the orchestral figurations which open the work evolve into quotations from Orpheus’ lament from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo relates directly to the subtext of a people who have endured countless hardships and tragedies through years of civil war. The work, for solo viola, accordion, percussion, double string ensemble and tape, is the showpiece and emotional center of the recording, and on its merits alone justifies the purchase of the disc or download.