Ernest Bloch (1880-1959)
Israel Symphony (1912-16)
Schelomo (Rhapsody for Cello) (1915-16)
Trois Poèmes Juifs (1913)
Zara Nelsova (cello)
Utah Symphony/Maurice Abravanel
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/James Sedares
rec. 1967/93, USA & New Zealand
Alto ALC1477 [75]
Here are three works from the teens of the last century. They stand representative of the orchestral music of Ernest Bloch. Although Swiss-born, Bloch led a long and footloose existence and ended his years in the USA, finally in Oregon. The three scores in question poured forth, amongst much else, in the five years before he moved, in the late 1910s, from Switzerland to teaching careers in the States.
At least superficially it seems fitting that he should have been recorded a half century and more later by one of the most eminent music directors of the Utah Symphony and a lesser known champion who in the recording studio often favoured disregarded works. Maurice Abravanel (1903-1993) recorded in profusion during his many years in Utah. There are Tchaikovsky (VoxBox) and Sibelius symphony cycles, amongst much else, including some stunning and not to be ignored Vaughan Williams. James Sedares (b. 1956) was born in Chicago and was very active in New Zealand and elsewhere working for Koch International often engaged with wonderful back-plot Americana.
The Trois Poèmes Juifs are not the stuff of showy display. Until brought up short by realisation that these are for orchestra you might have thought these were flashy display pieces for celebrity fiddlers and dutifully self-abnegating pianists. No such thing. These are extended and doughty little tone poems. Their designations include Calmo and Lento. The first is called Dance but defeats any Fiddler on the Roof clichés. It is instead burnished and passionate. It stretches its undulating, brooding message beyond the title. Bloch leans on a sort of barbarian dance idea at the very end of the piece, but it seems bolted on rather than organically grown. The second Poem is called Rite and this too plays false with the marking which is Calmo. Passages of sinuous poetic and self-absorbed beauty give way to emphatic drama. The final Funeral; Processionhas a silvery, glistening surface and this marries up with the expected processional Pentateuch savagery. Parallels can at times be drawn with the finale of Respighi’s much later Vetrate di Chiesa, even if the Bloch work ends in stygian depths.
Elite Canadian cellist Zara Nelsova (1918-2002) had a long career; I recall hearing her in the Dvořák Cello Concerto on Radio 3 in 1977. She recorded Schelomo several times, of which this is, I think, the latest (1967). Bloch regarded her highly and also wrote for her three suites for unaccompanied cello. This “Hebraic Rhapsody” is predominantly intense, soulful and inward but there are some savage episodes that parallel the jagged brass statement in Bloch’s Violin Concerto.
The half-hour Israel Symphony is in three ‘partitions’: Prayer in the Desert; Yom Kippur; Succoth, each with its own track. It was originally coupled on Vanguard with Schelomo. The first is a brooding meditation with angry, beetling puys. A strangely tormented dramatic celebration is unleashed for the Yom Kippur movement where the flames of torment burn toweringly high and then modestly low. Succoth is a festival in rejection of the ephemeral material world and with a concentration on “nationhood, spirituality and hospitality”. Its music is intense and has about it a golden nimbus with none of the wildness to be found in the opera MacBeth and intermittently in Schelomo and Prayer in the Desert. This “sunset” mood is tremulous and deeply moving. The seal is set on this burnished mood by a small choir of five singers (four female and one bass male) who emote a prayer to the Lord God and do so in French and Hebrew. The singers include the little acclaimed but treasurable Blanche Christensen. The Symphony was premiered in New York’s Carnegie Hall with Artur Bodanzky (1877-1939) conducting.
The notes by Peter Avis aptly support the listening experience which is very pleasing, both technically and in terms of the performances. Little allowance needs to be made for the sixty-year-old Utah tracks and the Sedares ones are also very good.
Rob Barnett
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