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.

LINK

Louis Lane Conducts American Composers, Plus a Bonus

To mark the death of conductor Louis Lane, I recently shared on another site my transfer of Lane's 1961 Epic LP, "Music for Young America," made with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, at that time the summer incarnation of the Cleveland Orchestra. Lane was the longtime assistant, associate and resident conductor of the Cleveland ensemble, during the Szell years.

I thought I might also make it available here, together with a substantial bonus of more music by Cleveland-related composers (see below).

Louis Lane

The performances in Lane's program of music by conservative American composers are finely judged and clean cut, a fitting tribute to an excellent musician and the superb Cleveland ensemble.

It may be a little ironic that the chosen “Music for Young America” was composed by five older composers, two of whom had already passed away at the time of the recording. But that doesn’t take away from the quality of the works themselves. The most familiar is Aaron Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture,” followed by the suite from Gian Carlo Menotti’s "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Wallingford Riegger’s “Dance Rhythms,” unlike many of his other works, is tonal.

The second side is devoted to two Cleveland composers. Herbert Elwell, longtime critic of The Plain Dealer, is represented by his most frequently performed work, the ballet suite from "The Happy Hypocrite." Finally, there is “The Old Chisholm Trail” from Arthur Shepherd’s suite “Horizons” (I believe Shepherd designated it as his Symphony No. 1), a relatively early example of Americana, dating from 1926.

To make the Cleveland connection complete, the informative liner notes are by Klaus Roy, longtime program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra and himself a notable composer.

LINK to Music for Young America (April 2025 remastering)

Music by Herbert Elwell and Ernest Bloch

Now to the bonus disc - a private recording of Elwell's "Blue Symphony," a setting of John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Blue Symphony" from the 1940s, together with Ernest Bloch's Piano Quintet, written in 1923, when the composer was head of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Herbert Elwell

The worthy performances are by the Feldman String Quartet, with soprano Elizabeth V. Forman and pianist Gloria Whitehurst Phillips. The recording was made for the Roanoke Fine Arts Center in 1962.

LINK to music by Elwell and Bloch (April 2025 remastering)