As with
any record company some discs seem to fall through the gaps
in the critics’ net and almost cease to exist. So it is with
Chandos in the case of two discs I intend to tackle: this
one and their fascinating Maric CD. Bloch is another of those
composers rarely to be heard in the orchestral concert-hall.
It may not always be so but for now his realm is recorded
music.
As for
Bloch’s
Concerto Symphonique it does not have the
field completely to itself. In 1990 the work was recorded,
also with the
Scherzo Fantastique by Laurel (LR851CD
- see
review).
Laurel are virtually a one-man champion for Bloch with many
discs to their credit though mostly chamber. Their recording
of the
Concerto Symphonique was by Micah Yui (piano)
and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the ever-enterprising
David Amos. That remains an estimable performance and one
which - like that of the
Scherzo - is a shade faster
than this one. However, the Chandos sound is superior benefiting
from the vividly lively acoustic of the St Petersburg Cappella
concert hall. The life is there in the vibrant decay of the
fortissimo at the end of the Scherzo.
As for
the music the Scherzo and the Concerto – pretty much contemporary
works – look back to a plunging romantic mood that some must
have found out of its time when the concerto was premiered
by Corinne Lacomblé in September 1949. That was when the
work was heard at the Edinburgh International Festival. The
three lusty movements are serious and strike rhetorical gestures
recalling the
sturm und drang of the Bliss Piano Concerto.
Into this are mixed elements of fantasy that look to the
Russians and to Bloch’s own early impressionistic-expressionist
music. This is a lanky turbulent concerto distinctively lacking
a relaxing change of mood in the form of a peaceable or reflective
andante or
adagio.
There is remission but it comes in the form of fantastic
Ravelian textures sewn with threat and foreboding – like
a hyper-tensile version of the sinister quiet elements of
The
Firebird.
Speaking
of Stravinsky there is a touch of early Stravinsky in the
Scherzo
Fantastique which despite its title has nothing of the
Wedding
Cake Caprice about it. It’s serious again, more brilliant
than the Concerto and, oddly enough, redolent of Bax in his
more thunderous moods in
Winter
Legends and the
First of
the three
Northern
Ballads.
Hiver – Printemps breaks the piano
and orchestra mould and takes us back to the first decade
of the last century with Bloch clearly affected by the expressionists
and impressionism. There is another version - Timpani IC1052
(see
review)
- but the couplings are quite different. This music is rather
like the fanciful irresistible idylls
in Glazunov’s
The Seasons yet filtered through an
expressionist gauze – perhaps one proffered by Zemlinsky.
The second poem ends with a valiantly successful failure
to ‘resolve’.
Throughout
this disc the execution is admirable apart from one moment
of hesitant raggedness near the start of
Printemps. It is also well documented by Calum MacDonald
who has done so much for the John Foulds revival.
Rob Barnett
Halida Dinova
(piano) 
