Ernest Bloch - Music for String Quartet (Galatea Quartet)

Information

Composer: Ernest Bloch

• Prelude (Recueillement)
• Landscapes (Paysages)
• Prayer (from Jewish Life No. 1) (arr. Julien Kilchenmann)
• Deux pièces
• Night (Nuit)
• In the Mountains (Haute Savoie)
• String Quartet in G major

Galatea Quartet

    Yuka Tsuboi, violin

    Sarah Kilchenmann, violin

    David Schneebeli, viola

    Julien Kilchenmann, cello

Date: 2011

Label: Sony

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Review

Bloch wrote five mature string quartets, spanning 40 years of his life, while the impressionistic shorter pieces included here date from between 1924 and 1950. They are highly characteristic, intense in feeling, restless, harmonically rich and well worth getting to know. The G major Quartet, however, is an enjoyably accomplished student work written when Bloch was only 15 years old. It is in the classical tradition and has a fine slow movement and an attractively light-hearted finale.

Of the shorter, evocative miniatures, the opening Prelude (Recueillement) is unexpectedly brief (barely four minutes) but poignant, a slow fugal farewell to the composer’s directorship of the Cleveland Institute of Music. The three Landscapes are even shorter and similarly concentrated, the first two lyrical, the last, shortest of all, bringing pounding percussive effects. In the warmly passionate Prayer (arranged by the quartet’s cellist, Julian Kilchenmann) is the Bloch we recognise from Schelomo. The Two Pieces, written much later in 1938 but based on earlier material, are contrasted, the first gracious and relatively calm, the second all but a scherzando. Night is a hauntingly characteristic nocturnal, full of melancholy. The two sketches In the Mountains are quite contrasted. The first is a yearning impression of dusk falling over the Haute Savoie, where the composer regularly visited in his youth, and the second is a lively rustic dance, altogether more positive and life-assertive.

The performances by the Galatea Quartet, very well recorded, are highly sympathic and beautifully played, catching the composer’s deeply felt response to his surroundings.

— Ivan March

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Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a Swiss-born American composer known for blending post-Romantic and neoclassical styles with Jewish musical themes. He studied in Switzerland and Belgium, taught at the Geneva Conservatory, and moved to the U.S. in 1916. Bloch became the first director of the Cleveland Institute of Music and later led the San Francisco Conservatory. He taught at UC Berkeley until retiring in 1952. Bloch's compositions, influenced by Debussy, Mahler, and Ravel, include Schelomo, Baal Shem, Avodath Hakodesh, Concerto Grosso No. 1, and Israel Symphony, among others.

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Formed in 2005, the Galatea Quartet includes siblings Sarah and Julien Kilchenmann, Yuka Tsuboi and Hugo Bollschweiler. They studied with members of the Carmina and Artemis Quartets and became fellows of the European Chamber Music Academy. The ensemble gained international recognition through competition wins and global concert tours. Their debut album Bloch: Landscapes (2011) earned them the ECHO Prize in 2012 and Zurich's Kulturförderpreis in 2013. Known for both classical and contemporary works, they collaborate with composers and artists across genres, from Isabel Mundry to Jon Lord and Tina Turner.

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