Frederick Block
was born
Friedrich Bloch
in Vienna and fled to England and then America as work for Jews rapidly dried up after Nazi Anschluss. Other Jewish composers headed for Hollywood and studied the language of American popular music, but
Block
went his own way. Writer
Helmut Flechtner
is quoted in the booklet here with a nice summary of his career: "He was a composer who didn't belong to any school of movement, who didn't want to prove anything by his composing, who was not abstract or romantic, but who with indefatigable industry finished work after work unconcerned about criticism..." Indeed, the chamber music here gives the listener the sense of entering a composer's particular little world. His music, even that written in America, has a Viennese flavor, and one influence is
Mahler
; if that composer had written more than a youthful essay in chamber music, it might have sounded a bit like this.
can shift directions in the midst of a movement in an attempt to suggest a large canvas for small music, but he can also be quite concise. Sample the
Suite for clarinet and piano, Op. 73
, whose five movements take up less than eight minutes. Each work is different in structure, but there is a thread of Viennese lyricism connecting everything. Any one of the four pieces here would enhance a chamber music recital, and the
ARC Ensemble
deserves credit for its revival of
's music in the
Chandos
label's "Exiles" series. ~ James Manheim