BLOCH: Schelomo–Hebrew Rhapsody; Avodath hakodesh–Sacred Service; Concerto grosso No. 1; Violin Concerto; Suites 1 and 2 for Solo Violin – with Rostrropovich/Menuhin/Bernstein/Abravanel/Marriner – EMI Classics (2 CDs)

by | May 24, 2010 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

BLOCH: Schelomo–Hebrew Rhapsody; Avodath hakodesh–Sacred Service; Concerto grosso No. 1; Violin Concerto; Suites 1 and 2 for Solo Violin – Mstislav Rostropovich, cello/Yehudi Menuhin, violin/Douglas Lawrence, baritone /Francis Grier, piano obbligato/Orchestre National de France/ Leonard Bernstein (Schelomo)/Utah Chorale and Utah Symphony Orchestra/ Maurice Abravanel (Sacred Service)/Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/ Sir Neville Marriner (Concerto grosso)

EMI Classics 4 56319 2, (2 CDs) 75:38; 79:56 ****:


Swiss-born composer and pedagogue Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) fused a strong French and German tradition to his ethnic Jewish identity to create music of consistently vivid color and character. The music of Bloch often explodes in something like ecstasies or epiphanies of color, and the modal harmonies imbue his intense riffs with an exotic or antique spirit. The 1976 Paris inscription of Schelomo (1915) with Rostropovich and Bernstein thunders between declamation and ardent entreaty, the “passion in the desert” sensibility vibrating with the syntax of Jewish doxology. Coincidental with the Yeats poem “The Second Coming,” we can hear the cries of the indignant desert birds as a terrible force slouches towards Bethlehem, while Bloch sends up plaints for divine intervention.

The Sacred Service (1933) represents Bloch’s five-part essay in Mass setting, a Reform-Jewish analogy for the Latin prototype. Ironically, the piece received its premier in Turin, Italy (12 January 1934), just prior to Mussolini’s pact with Hitler. Douglas Lawrence intones the baritone solo (26-27 May 1977) with soft sympathy, and the rather austere chorus replies with a modal devotion not so far from the ecclesiastical piety in the Faure Requiem. A six-note scale dominates the entire work, which itself documents the soul’s ineluctable progression to revelation, embodied most dramatically in the third movement, with the presentation of the Torah to the multitude, the confrontation of the diurnal with the Divine. Yet Bloch’s intention transcends the “merely” ethnic vehicle of a Hebrew service, since his message of cosmic joy–in the last movement Adoration and Benediction–embraces all races and creeds, another form of the Schiller Ode to Joy for the Beethoven Ninth Symphony. Lovely woodwinds and strings open the Silent Devotion–with muted chorus–prior to the taking of sacred Scroll from the Ark.  The blazing harmonies exult, certainly, but they evidence Bloch’s fear as well as love of God. A decided romantic strain permeates the fourth part, the Returning of the Scroll to the Ark, and Debussy’s color influence from the Nocturnes shimmers in the harmonies.  Maurice Abravanel’s assembled forces exact their  resonant due at the Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, a truly blissful concordance of sounds.

The Concerto grosso No. 1 for strings and piano obbligato (1925) embodies Bloch’s neo-Classical predilection, akin to Stravinsky’s open-air style after WW I. Modal and contrapuntal, the four movement suite (rec. 21-22 May 1978) enjoys a suave and acerbic reading from Marriner and the ASMF, slashing and festive, athletic and pungent, especially in Francis Grier‘s piano part. The Violin Concerto (1938) had its first inscription with Joseph Szigeti; Menuhin’s collaboration with Paul Kletzki dates from 18-19 July 1963. Romanesque and cantorial at once, the Violin Concerto resembles the Second Concerto of Bela Bartok, in that the last movements reworks materials from the first in the form of bravura permutations. Menuhin’s tone suffers a bit of wobble, but the spirit of inflamed inspiration, the “Hassidic” influence, certainly abounds. Kletzki brings in his own colorist contribution in terms of violas, harp, and a hazy veil of sound in the first movement Salome would be proud to wear. The cadenza strongly hints at the Mendelssohn Concerto plus some virtuoso elements of its own. The fanfare and timbrel motifs carry through to the second movement, solidifying the “cyclic” nature of this fiery, even heroic, music according to the principles laid down by Cesar Franck.
  

The two Suites for Solo Violin (rec. 4 January and 15 February 1974; 16 April 1975) were composed in 1958, each lasting about ten minutes. Their relative brevity and concision seem thoroughly imbued with the J.S. Bach ethos, cross fertilized by Jewish doxology and Bartok’s Solo Sonata, coincidentally written for Yehudi Menuhin. Menuhin plays them with an astringent passion imbued with fierce conviction.  

–Gary Lemco
      

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