Bloch: Poems of the Sea

Day 245

Ernest Bloch: Poems of the Sea

Malmõ Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo

Bloch was one of the first major Swiss composers, although he spent music of his life in the USA, where he had a distinguished academic career. I had heard his Schelomo but as far as I am aware hadn’t heard anything else of his. 

These three Poems of the Sea were originally written, as far as I can establish, for solo piano in 1922 but were orchestrated by the composer soon afterwards. I listened to the orchestral version and without knowing their original as piano music you would never suspect that they started out as keyboard pieces - the orchestration is very convincing. The first of the three has some echoes of Ravel but otherwise this is fairly conventional early 20th century neo-romantic music tinged with some folk-song elements. To be honest they didn’t make much of an impression. There were not unpleasant by any means but there was nothing distinctive here and the last movement seemed to me to be bombastic in places, particularly towards the end. So ultimately there was nothing much here to detain me.