Ernest Bloch - Symphony in C Sharp Minor (1902)
Conducted by Lev Markiz with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra.
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| Ernest Bloch |
I. Lento - Allegro Agitato Ma Molto Energico - 00:00
II. Andante Molto Moderato - 19:48
III. Vivace - 33:03
IV. Allegro Energico E Molto Marcato - 43:05
Ernest Bloch occupies an ambivalent position in twentieth century music. Born in Geneva in 1880, the son of the owner of a clock business, he spent periods of his life in Germany, in Paris and in the United States of America, as eclectic, possibly, in his choice of home as in his music. Some of his compositions have become a well known element in popular repertoire, particularly those of a pronounced Jewish character, such as the Hebrew Rhapsody for cello and orchestra Scheloma and the three Pictures of Hassidic Life for violin that make up Baal Shem. Nevertheless, while the overtly Jewish character of a number of his works is of obv
ious importance, he was able to achieve considerable distinction in music that seems entirely to lack anything of the kind.
The Symphony in C sharp minor, completed in 1903 is a work in which Bloch was later to detect the qualities and faults of youth. His original sketches for the symphony suggested titles for the movements, the first, the Tragedy of Life, to show doubts, struggles and hopes, followed by a second movement of happiness and faith. The third movement, the Irony and Sarcasms of Life, was to show struggle, leading to the final Will and Happiness.
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| Ernest Bloch with children (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Festival of Swiss - German music under the director of the composer and provoked considerable hostility from reviewers, with one critic suggesting that concert police should be employed to lock up for 24 hours composers guilty of such prolonged torture. The writer Robert Godet, to whom the published work was later to be dedicated, was more perceptive, adding to the encouragement that Bloch had already received from his teacher Ysaÿe, to whom he had played the symphony in Munich earlier in the year. Godet, later distinguished for his anti-Semitism, detected a Jewish element in the music, an insight that was to influence Bloch's future work. The whole symphony received its first complete performance in Geneva five years later, when it aroused more sympathetic interest. Bloch himself, in later life, was to point out that the symphony contains the roots of what he was to become, pessimist, optimist, warm-hearted or ironical, a summary of his continuing doubts and aspirations.
The symphony is extravagantly orchestrated for a large wind section and percussion that includes tam-tam, chimes, glockenspiel and xylophone, as well as the more usual instruments. The first movement, in which, as elsewhere, early German critics detected the influence of Gustav Mahler, a composer whose work Bloch had never heard at the time, starts in doubt and hesitation to swell in heroic confidence, turning aside at times to episodes of lyrical romanticism, with a final return to the mood of its opening.
The second movement offers expansive music with all the orchestral colouring and variety of a Richard Strauss, leading to a Scherzo of even greater contrast, introduced by an energetic fanfare and leading on to an episode for xylophone, before relaxing into a mood of lyrical serenity, followed by a return to the harsher irony that frames it. The finale opens with a fugue, its angular subject confidently asserted to introduce a movement that makes passing reference to much that has gone before, bringing the work to conclusion of tranquil happiness.
