Abravanel Conducts Bloch's 'Sacred Service'

Today we're continuing a series of Maurice Abravanel's late-career recordings for the Angel label. The subject is Ernest Bloch's important, beautiful and moving Sacred Service (Avodath Hakodesh).

As always in this series, the performances by the Utah Symphony and Chorale are both splendid and well recorded.

Here is Abran Chipman of High Fidelity on the significance of this work: "Despite the substantial Jewish contribution, creative and re-creative, to Western music, a combination of socio-economic, theological, and aesthetic factors has limited to a handful the number of specifically liturgical Jewish works, among which Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service) of 1930-33 stands pre-eminent."

Ernest Bloch

When this work was written, Bloch was mid-career. Born in 1880 in Switzerland, he came to the US in 1916. The composer became the founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1920, and the head of the San Francisco Conservatory five years later. He returned to Switzerland in 1930, where he composed Avodath Hakodesh, moving back to the US in 1939.

Bloch was a superb composer, whose works I should feature more often. Previously he has been represented only by his Piano Quintet, which is newly remastered and available here along with other 20th century works.

Maurice Abravanel

Douglas Lawrence

Here is what Chipman had to say about the performance on this LP: "Angel's Douglas Lawrence is close to ideal, bringing special ecstasy and sadness to his fervent singing (cf. the closing pages of the first movement). The brief solo soprano and alto parts, angelically sung on [Bloch's own recording on] London, are not quite as distinguished on either Columbia [the Bernstein performance] or Angel, but none of the choral groups has a significant edge over the others. 

"I have already praised Angel's skill in handling overall balances; that applies to smaller details as well (an overly spotlighted celesta excepted). The pressing is good, and a text is provided - though only in English. That, however, is the only jarring note in this intelligently conceived and executed production of a landmark work."

The recording, in the Mormon Tabernacle, dates from May 1977. As with several of Abravanel's Angel recordings, it is SQ-encoded if there are any die-hard quadrophonic listeners out there.

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