It is never too late to make good personal
discoveries of great music. Indeed, there is something quite
wonderful about finding these “new” gems. If there is anything
regrettable to knowing more and more music it is the absence
of these surprises. Just think of the envy you might feel
of an interested music-lover who gets to listen to Mozart’s
C minor Piano Concerto, or the Brahms Piano Quartet for the
first time.
“ Discoveries” that
come late are no reason for shame for alleged ‘previous ignorance’ -
as if one could have known all the repertoire at the moment
of one’s musical inception. They are to be embraced and cherished.
The beauty of classical music, and in particular classical
radio, is not least due to its facilitating such discoveries.
Another way to
happen upon surprises involves aimless browsing in record
stores, something that has become the privilege of those
living in large, culture-focused cities. That’s how in 2004
I came upon what was a disc of such discovery for me: Bloch’s
- four out of five - String Quartets in the superb recording
of the Griller Quartet then re-issued on Decca (see
review).
Ernest Bloch
(1880–1959) was born in Switzerland, educated in Belgium
- where he was a student of Eugène Ysaÿe - and moved to the
US during World War I, becoming a US citizen in 1924. He
was the founding music director of the Cleveland Institute
of Music. After a decade long sojourn to Switzerland he returned
to the US where he spent his last 18 years in Oregon.
Now, knowing
Bloch for more than just his exceptionally beautiful
Schelomo for
cello and orchestra (or “
Rhapsodie hébraïque pour violoncelle
et grand orchestre”), I keep a keen eye out for any new
Bloch CD to cross my desk. Hyperion’s recording of Bloch’s
two Piano Quintets with the Goldner String Quartet and Piers
Lane is one such disc.
Admittedly it
took quite a bit longer than expected to take to these works;
extraordinarily high expectations of immediate fascination
didn’t help. What I easily appreciated though, and still
consider the ‘secret’ highlights of this Hyperion release,
are the small, mostly early pieces for string quartet that
are the fillers between the two substantial quintets.
Bloch’s idiom
covers anything from romantic lyricism - the aforementioned
Schelomo being
the best example - to neo-classicism to an acerbic, Shostakovichian
bite. The Impressionistic works “Night” comprises about three
minutes worth of music, composed in 1923. From the same year
comes “Landscapes”; a miniature three movement string quartet,
his “0
th”, if you will. These two are certainly
more in the lyrical camp. “Night” gently rocks back and forth;
a lullaby fit for cradling figures from Tim Burton’s mind.
Paysages – “Landscapes” starts
with a similar, all-pianissimo movement depicting, in the
phrase of Glenn Gould, ‘the idea of north’. It had been inspired
by Robert Flaherty’s film “Nanook of the North” . The second
movement is meatier fare.
Alpestre is a homage to
his Swiss homeland that gives the viola juicy material to
work with.
Tongataboo, with faux-naïve stomping and
entrancing rhythmic repetitions, evokes tribal dances of
Tonga. In doing so it comes closest to the driving energy
of Bartók in his string quartets.
The “Two Pieces” is
a two-movement string ‘quartetlet’ dedicated to the Griller
Quartet. It consists of two very different and separate movements,
composed in 1938 and 1950. Zany lyricism turns into astringency
in the
Andante moderato, before running out of steam
in contemplative C-major. The
Allegro molto is a vibrantly
vivacious piece, moving along busily except for a little
lyrical lacunae at its center, as if a structural inversion
of the
Andante.
The Piano Quintet
no.1 is the work of the 33 year old Bloch, begun just after
he started his position in Cleveland. At well over thirty
minutes, it towers over the little string quartetlets and
is nearly twice the length of his 1957 Piano Quintet no.2.
It’s dark, wildly chugging along in whirls and employs quarter-tones.
Though thematically cyclical in a Brahmsian way, I cannot
determine any ‘idea’ that might guide me through the first
movement, much less the entire work. The second movement
(
Andante mistico) is more romantically inclined, and
if it isn’t lyrical
per se, at least it is cut from
larger, longer swathes of music that lead right into the
third movement. That
Allegro energico immediately
calls to memory the beginning of the opening
Agitato.
The rippling current running through it is at a fast clip,
sweeping and powerful, with the piano working in atmospheric
ways underneath the busy, thorny passages of the strings.
It peters out gently, consolingly – like the first of the
Two Pieces – on a very deliberate, reiterated C-major chord.
Bloch composed
the Second Piano Quintet for the opening of the Alfred Hertz
Memorial Concert Hall at Berkeley and only two years before
he died of colon cancer. A calmly, perhaps aimlessly, ruminating
Andante sits
between an agitated, aggressively pulsing
Animato first
and the
Allegro third movement. Twelve-tone rows work
within a tonal/modal language that no one would ever think
of calling “a-tonal” just from listening to it. Rising figures
buzz along, accompanied by little shrieks in the violins,
doing their part to give the slow movement its serene, mystical
quality. It moves
attacca into the finale, an assertive
movement similar to the first – before its last two of almost
eight minutes end the Quintet very softly, in a contemplative
pp.
Jens F. Laurson
Piers Lane (piano) 
