Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Bloch's "Greatest Hit"
Today marks the anniversary of the first performance of the best-known work of the Swiss-born American composer, Ernest Bloch, whose "Hebrew rhapsody—Schelomo," for cello and orchestra, premiered at Carnegie Hall on May 3 in 1917. "Schelomo" is a vivid meditation on the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, which describes King Solomon reflecting sadly on the vanity of human endeavor—"Schelomo" being the original Hebrew pronunciation of Solomon. "Schelomo" premiered just a year after Bloch came to the United States. In America, Bloch had found encouragement and remarkable acceptance of his music. His "Schelomo" was just one of several works premiered at an all-Bloch concert at Carnegie Hall arranged by The Society of the Friends of Music, and performed by an orchestra made up chiefly of New York Philharmonic members with the Philadelphia orchestra's principal cellist Hans Kindler as soloist. "Schelomo" was originally written with the Russian cellist Serge Alexander Barjansky in mind, and was dedicated to him and his wife; but it was not until a concert in Rome in 1933, a fateful year for the Jews of Europe, that Bloch got to conduct the work with Barjansky as soloist. Despite his success in America, Bloch tried to resume his career in Europe in the 1930s, but, discouraged by the rise of anti-Semitism and threats of war, he returned to American for good in 1938, where he continued to compose, conduct, and teach until his death in 1959.