Search - Weilerstein Duo :: Ernest Bloch: Complete Music For Violin And Piano, Volume 1

BUILDING BLOCHS

Melvyn M. Sobel | Freeport (Long Island), New York | 02/04/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) is a composer of myriad facets, at times incredibly complex, at other times, almost casually innocent. This initial volume of his complete music for violin and piano is adequate proof. But what is certain, I think, is his obvious love for the freedom chamber music allowed him. In this medium, alone, could he truly lay bare the bones.If less is more, than Bloch's Suite No. 1 for Solo Violin (1958) distills, absolutely, the composer's deepest angst. Written for Yehudi Menuhin (together with the Suite No. 2, his final composition), the piece is very much akin to Bach's Sonatas and Partitas in its breadth of expression and profundity. There is a quietude here that belies complexity.This, however, is not the case with the extrovert abandon of the composer's Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (1920). Hardly an "early" work, although its rambunctious outer movements seem to indicate otherwise, Bloch's musical signature is already quite visible creating its musical roller coaster, although the influence of Stravinsky and Ravel is in evidence. But clearly, even then, Bloch had harnessed something "elemental" in this "new" music of his, something far beyond the confines of his contemporaries. The blatant mysticism, alone, harks back to a period fundamental and eagerly unblemished.The Abodah for Violin and Piano (1929), also written for Menuhin, and the Suite hebraique of 1951 are quite another side of Bloch. In both we hear the composer of such an orchestral beauty as Schelomo using his thematically and intrinsically fetching Jewish voice to great advantage. These works, especially the appealing Abodah, reveal the fully melodic vein Bloch was very apt to mine, but did so judiciously.The Weilerstein Duo is first rate in this repertoire with plenty of flair and fire to spread, yet not withholding warmth or sensitivity. The sound is every bit their equal.[Running time: 55:23]"

Not the best recording of Bloch's awesome first violin and p

Discophage | France | 01/13/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Violinist Donald Weilerstein's main claim on the music-loving public's attention is as a longtime leader of the Cleveland Quartet. He is here partnered with his partner in life, pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, in volume 1 of a complete survey of Ernest Bloch's works for violin and piano and solo violin, which was published on 2 CDs by Arabesque in 1989.



In the massive and brutal first movement of Bloch's first violin and piano sonata, their overall approach is not unlike that of Stern and Zakin (in volume 28 of Sony's tribute, "A life in music", with Baal Shem and sonatas by Hindemith and Copland, see my review). Like them they hurl into the pounding chords with frenzied passion and unrelenting tension, but also significantly broaden the tempo in the more lyrical passages (1:42). Mr Weilerstein doesn't command the same kind of big, beefy tone as Stern, and his violin sometimes verges on the wiry, but then Bloch's 1st movement isn't the kind of music that calls for pretty, mellow tone either. It is his partner that I find failing to a certain degree. Vivian Hornik Weilerstein is prone to over pedalling, maybe to conceal the fact that she doesn't have enough muscle power to hammer Bloch's massive chordal writing, and her right hand doesn't always stand out clearly from the composer's pounding textures. She plays Bloch's chords in a thick and weighty manner rather than with violence and snap, and the music's brutality is a bit watered down as a result. The Weilersteins take the second movement "Molto quieto" at exactly the tempo prescribed by Bloch, which is rather brisk in comparison to others (as Stern's more spacious approach), but with no loss of a sense of hushed mystery, and with organically processed transitions and fine, dramatic passion in the more animated passages. Like Stern and like Aaron Rosand (on an Audiofon CD titled "Hebraic Legacies" - see my review), they play the passage at 5:57 arco and sul ponticello, rather than pizzicato as Bloch indicates - a decision I do not find entirely misjudged, despite its departure from the score. The finale has plenty of drive and energy if not particularly distinguished tone from Mr Weilerstein, but the final pages do not quite elicit the mood of appeased serenity that others, like Stern or Rosand, have conjured.



Abodah (God's worship) is a short, wistful and meditative prayer that Bloch wrote in 1929 for the seven-year old Yehudi Menuhin, very much in the same Jewish mood as the composer's Baal Shem, and the stark suite for solo violin is the first in a series of two that he wrote for the same performer, at the end of his life, in 1958. The 1951 Suite hébraique is also suffused with Jewishness, but of a less plaintive, more affirmative kind than Abodah and Baal Sheem.



Excellent, informative notes by Suzanne Bloch, the composer's daughter. The interpretations on this disc and its companion (with the second sonata and suite, Baal Shem and Exotic Night) are not without blemishes then, but they also have many qualities that, despite the disc's relatively short total timing by today's standards (55:23) make this complete survey of the composer's output for the instrument an indispensable acquisition for the Bloch admirer.

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