All the works here require a very particular identification from the performers, and Edgar Moreau has it in spades. Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei is but one example of the cellist’s depth of feeling to display “his profound love for the music of the great Jewish composers”: rich and varied tone, generous phrasing and impassioned playing, and not forgetting virtuosity, at whatever tempo, dynamic or character the music yields. There is also Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s short if filmic Cello Concerto in C, a vivid and lyrically beautiful piece. Ernest Bloch is represented twice: by From Jewish Life – three atmospheric and haunting miniatures – and the expansive Schelomo, given a knockout performance, almost vocal from Moreau, certainly intense, and in which the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Michael Sanderling (a son of Kurt and himself a cellist) are equal partners in terms of being inside this ‘Hebraic Rhapsody’ and projecting it as soulful and passionate music (even more filmic than the Korngold, worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille movie) and also its large-orchestra detailing, superb sound (September 2020, KKL) – in vivid relief and with potent imagery. To close are Ravel’s Deux Mélodies hébraïques, both coming off eloquently well in cello form.
Edgar Moreau with Lucerne Symphony Orchestra & Michael Sanderling record Transmission for Erato – music by Bloch, Bruch, Korngold, Ravel.
Perhaps I need to clarify that neither Bruch nor Ravel were Jewish. Colin