A Bonanza of Bloch Recordings

The name and works of Ernest Bloch have long been absent from earshot. The exception: his 1916 “Schelomo,” subtitled “A Hebraic Rhapsody,” a cello showpiece whose hard-breathing exoticism has come to symbolize Hollywood Judaica, when in fact it inspired film music rather than being its product.

The Swiss-born (1880), French-educated Bloch, who resided in the United States for many years until his death in 1959, was never a radical, nor was he an adherent of any school or composer. He admired Stravinsky and was sufficiently interested in Schoenberg to employ serial procedures within the context of non-serial works. He practiced his own kind of neoclassicism and was a melodist in the Romantic sense.

He was also one of the most respected teachers in this country between the two World Wars, numbering among his pupils such stylistically disparate composers as George Antheil, Roger Sessions, Randall Thompson and Leon Kirchner.

In a coincidence becoming commonplace on today’s impenetrably weird classical recording scene, Bloch has become an overnight presence with the appearance of three simultaneously released CD editions--the first three--of his once-popular First Piano Quintet (1923).

That the score has not been with us on a more regular basis is surprising. It packs quite a wallop with its motoric intensity in the outer movements--replete with quarter-tones, very much in the air in the years following World War I--and melodic intervals suggestive of Hebraic chant. Wonderfully dark, moody music, above all in its sinuous mistico-misterioso slow movement.

The three recorded editions--each coupled with the lesser and much later (1957) Second Piano Quintet--differ considerably. The Washington-based American Chamber Players compromise the dark suggestiveness of the opening movement by rushing and by pianist Lambert Orkis’ pecking (Koch 7041). The Portland (Maine) Quartet and pianist Paul Posnak are similarly too fast at the outset while dragging their feet in the slow movement (Arabesque 6618).

Pianist Howard Karp and the Pro Arte Quartet, in residence at the University of Wisconsin, ultimately satisfy the needs of the score in a powerfully cohesive reading, all the more compelling for being faithful to Bloch’s indicated tempos. It’s on the Laurel label (848), producer-owner Herschel Burke Gilbert’s Los Angeles repository of neglected 20th-Century composers, Bloch chief among them.

The generous Laurel program contains a third piece, Bloch’s somber 1956 Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello, played with commanding intensity by the Pro Arte’s Parry Karp.

A more upbeat and overtly entertaining piece is the Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1925) for string orchestra and piano obbligato, whose three lively fast sections encapsulate a lengthy, lovely, rather misterioso slow movement. Also on this fully packed CD (Mercury 432 718), which features Bloch recordings made by Howard Hanson and his Eastman-Rochester Symphony around 1960, are the Second Concerto Grosso (1952), which displays its composer’s undiminished affection for Baroque forms, and “Schelomo,” with Georges Miquelle giving a lighter, more fanciful--and less virtuosic--reading of the solo part than is customary.

Hanson’s energetic conducting and the rough enthusiasm of his orchestra are most becoming to the music and the recording is not among the more hectoringly close-up examples of Mercury’s “Living Presence” sound.

A traditional--high-pressure, high-tension--”Schelomo” features cellist Ofra Harnoy, whose throbbingly vibrato-ed playing is impressive in an overbearing way, while Charles Mackerras conducts the London Philharmonic with as much taste as the music can tolerate. The Hebraic theme is maintained in the accompanying “Kol Nidrei” of Max Bruch, with that composer’s “Ave Maria” serving as interfaith counterbalance.

A more elegant interpretation--too much so in its smoothing out of the first movement’s contours--than Hanson’s Second Concerto Grosso is David Amos conducting the London Symphony in a Bloch program (Laurel 851) chiefly devoted to the long, loud and overstuffed “Concerto Symphonique” of 1948.

The latter is at least partially tolerable for the presence as soloist of 21-year-old pianist Micah Yui whose blazing enthusiasm, power and technical assurance are, however, expended on more palatable material in the form of the bracing and brief “Scherzo fantasque,” also from 1948, which rounds out the handsomely recorded disc.