Mark Kopytman is one of Israel’s foremost contemporary composers. His personal style is characterized by predilection for powerful dramatic gestures, pure melodic lines split into heterophony blending, variety of textures achieved through the super-imposition of multi-voice layers and by skillful handling of large orchestral masses.
Jehoash Hirshberg, Israel Today –
In Kopytman’s hands, the heterophony flowers as a subtle and complex texture that occupies a mysterious middle ground between harmony and polyphony. His music is at once allusive and profound, dramatic and intimate, using new resources to echo timeless cultural and emotional concerns.
Bernard Jacobson, The Philadelphia Stagebill
Kopytman’s music is often characterized by a strong melodic orientation, clearly inspired by the Jewish oriental folk tradition. Within his personal compositional style, Kopytman has conceptualized the ancient word Heterophony, transforming it into a vital 20-th century technique.
Nancy Usher, Tempo Magazine, London
Mark Kopytman’s Dedication re-creates the human voice in mourning with startling effectiveness. The swaying, sliding Jewish lament – even to the vocal cracking – is most imaginatively done.
Bernard Holland, New York Times
Kopytman’s Eight Chapters (String Quartet #4) is composed as a series of short, diverse fragments that convey anger and rage, yearning and poetic aura. Wonderful piece…
Ora Binur, Maariv, Tel Aviv
The title “Memory” does not begin to suggest the stirring effect this tightly constructed work produces. Its hard message was deeply moving.
Gordon Sparber, Washington Post
At the same time Russian in the soft colors of the strings, very oriental in the vocal arabesques and rhythms, very modern in the orchestral writing, Memory perfectly integrates its various elements. This short and dense work imposed immediate sense of concentration and religious fervor.
Pierre Macho, Journal de Geneva
The conclusion of the Cantus VI is apprehended as a sudden insight, as an image of inspired unattainable and religious beauty – beauty of transfigured suffering. The listener experiences the instant of a true inner piece, which is so rare (and therefore really unforgettable) in the music of nowadays.
Julia Kreinin, IMI News
Mark Kopytman’s Cantus II was a powerful piece, which sprang from folk music and grew in wonderfully exuberant and ingeniously orchestrated composition.
Peter Halasz, Hungarian Music News, Budapest
The work’s name “Voices” serves as a guide to anyone who opens his ears and his heart (which is even more important), for one who does listen enters a world of mystery and magic.
Benjamin Bar-Am, Jerusalem Post
Cantus V is equally cantabile and full of virtuosity, evidently inspired by Jewish folk music, as well as very colorful and diverse.
Aachener Volkszeitung, Germany
Kopytman’s String Quartet #3 composed in Russia before his immigration 30 years ago has stood the test of the time, sounding as vigorous and appealing as when it was performed here for the first time.
Uri Eppstein, Jerusalem Post
The Life of the World to Come (Circles) possesses rare beauty and an extremely suggestive poetic halo.
Federico Manjeau, La Razon, Argentina