Indeed, Moishe Ganchoff, besides having possessed a most sweet voice and besides the fact that he had everything a Chazan has to have in order to become a Great Chazan, the fantastic coloratura, the very highly musicianship and the fervor and beauty of delivery, Moishe had something unique, his compositions are not only beautiful masterpieces, but many pieces of his creation are containing a new “Musical Language” meaning, that in those pieces, one could hear new moods never heard before and those pieces can not be compared to any other piece in the Chazonus repertoire. The most wonderful thing about them is, that they were created out of the traditional modes. They were unmistakably true to the tradition of Chazonus.
No wonder then that every Chazan which respects himself would wait impatiently to Ganchoff’s next new composition.
I once visited him in his home in Brighton Beach and in our conversation I mentione a certain Chazan and said: “This Chazan made a very successful career”. To this Ganchoff reacted: “Chazonus is not a career, Chazonus is a mission”.
One piece which the audience is invariably asking from me to sing when I appear as a guest Chazan or in my own Synagogue, is the “Hashir Sheahleviyim” composed by Israel Alter and Moishe Ganchoff.
Moishe Ganchoff first sang this piece in the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv in 1963 where he gave a historical concert with Moishe Koussevitzky and Yaakov Barkin, he stole the show with the “Hashir Shehaleviyim”.