Bloch Symphony in C sharp minor etc. from Naxos

[eschiss1]

Well, Szymanowski past the unrevised (and unperformed since its premiere??) version of his 2nd symphony (or, since that's unlikely to be a subject of our considerations, past e.g. his 2nd piano sonata Op.21 (1910/11) and some other relatively earlyish works where the influences seem to be more Reger - and - Strauss - etc.) -

is probably too much first too much influenced by Debussy and maybe Scriabin(?) (sort of) (1st vn. concerto (1916), 3rd symphony (1914-16), 3rd piano sonata (1917) ...) ... and then too much simply his own person (but in a Modern, though not "Modernist"- but also not Romantic (in this forum's minimal-dissonance (Hovhaness?) way, certainly not; but also not in common-practice, either) (Stabat Mater (1925/26), e.g.) to be really quite right for this forum, I'd agree. Much as I might have come to like more and more of his music, his early music at most is probably appropriate here I guess (though I'm not positive that his music up to 1917 or so is further outside the bounds of the forum than Bax's stuffs  , which has been ruled allowable (not that I mind, I also enjoy Bax). Well, not for me to say!)

[eschiss1]

BTW there is an upload of one work by Bloch in our Downloads archive (his 1913 Jewish poems, from an LP.)

[semloh]

I have really enjoyed this discussion regarding the reasons for the symphony's neglect.

Since the response of audiences and critics when it was performed in the early years seems to rule out a perception that it was simply not that good, my own tentative explanation is that it arrived on the musical scene just as tastes changed, and the music world was pursuing new forms; and, it was overshadowed by Bloch's subsequent works because they were more in tune with the interwar zeitgeist, they were also shorter and more amenable to being added to a concert programme and put on a 78!

The third factor - Bloch's Jewishness and his explicit musical attachment to Jewish traditions - reportedly played a part in the unwillingness of authorities in France and Germany to perform the work during the inter-war years, but it doesn't seem to have been so strong as to affect the popularity of subsequent works during that period.

Anyhoo - all that aside, I love its shades of Bruckner, Mahler, and Strauss, as noted, and I reckon it's a very fine work!

[chill319]

The C sharp minor Symphony is a glorious, but ultimately derivative piece - whereas his (equally glorious) Violin Concerto could not have been written by anyone else. 

That sums it up neatly. It's the same come-hell-or-high-water spirit in both.

This is as good a place as any to mention that a friend of mine traveled with Bloch by ship from New York to San Francisco via the Panama Canal in 1946. Bloch spent hours every day of the voyage studying Bach's Art of the Fugue.