Ernest Bloch: Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1925) Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik, with George Schick (piano) Recorded April 23-24, 1951, in Orchestra Hall, Chicago. First issued as Mercury MG-50001, coupled with Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta." Reissued in the 1960's as Mercury Wing MGW-14034, coupled with Morton Gould's "Spirituals for Orchestra" conducted by Antal Dorati. The movements of the Concerto Grosso are as follows: 1. Prelude 2. Dirge (at 3:04) 3. Pastorale and Rustic Dances (at 9:27) 4. Fugue (at 15:41) The following paragraphs about the music are reproduced from the liner notes for MGW-14034: "American music reflects the diversity of backgrounds and traditions from which Americans themselves have emerged. Ernest Bloch, a Swiss by birth and an American by adoption, has achieved his greatest fame and success as a composer with a series of Old Testament evocations unmatched in searing rhapsodic power by any composer before or since. The blazing power of 'Schelomo' and its companion works in the same idiom has tended to create in the minds of some a one-sided view of Bloch as a composer, which represents only one aspect of his work. It must be remembered that Bloch was a Swiss by birth and bringing-up who carried out his musical studies in Brussels, Munich and Paris. When the body of his work is studied as a whole, it becomes plain that the structural procedures of the Franco-Belgian school of the last century, as well as the atmosphere of the mountains of his native Switzerland, were also strong influences in his musical style. "The 'Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra and Piano Obbligato' is one of Bloch's major essays along this line of endeavor. The score was started in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in December 1924 and finished in Cleveland the following year. The first movement takes the form of a terse and powerfully accented Prelude. There follows a somber and elegiac 'Dirge' with a contrasting middle section featuring the solo violin. 'Pastorale and Rustic Dances' brings the 'Swiss' Bloch very much to the fore - even to the quotation of a folk melody remembered from childhood. In essence, this movement is a study in contrast between dance and lyric elements, with the lyrical strain winning out with triumphant intensity in the final pages. The finale is a sturdy four-square fugue, whose rhythmic vitality and delightful countersubject carry the music to a surging and brilliant conclusion complete with recall of the accented thematics of the initial Prelude." To download a higher-quality audio file of this recording, please visit my blog, The Shellackophile - http://shellackophile.blogspot.com - where this and many other vintage recordings may be downloaded.

• published: 27 Jun 2012
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