Bloch: Sacred Service, Foss: Song Of Songs / Royal

Robert Merrill, Rabbi Judah Cahn, Jennie Tourel, Sylvia Marlowe, Christine Stavrache, Metropolitan Synagogue Choir, New York Community Church Choir, New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

Bloch: Sacred Service, Foss: Song of Songs, Ben-Haim: Sweet Psalmist of Israel

This rare recrding features Bernstein and the NY Phil, as well as Robert Merrill. This is part of the Royal Edition series. Only one copy in stock.
Teaming composers as disparate as Bloch, Foss and Ben-Haim on the basis of shared ethnicity seems a slightly dubious exercise. On the other hand, since these three performances may be considered definitive, this is a real opportunity to discover some worthwhile new music. Bloch's Sacred Service is perfectly approachable in idiom, although, in echoing 'colourful' scores like Schelomo rather than anything more astringent, Bloch does not avoid an impression of rhythmic squareness. Those familiar with the more avant-gardiste utterances of Lukas Foss will scarcely recognize the composer from his early Song of Songs, at last getting a proper UK release. The manner is post-Hindemith, pre-Bernstein; Tippettian pastoral, with an exotic element intensified here by the cosmopolitan delivery of Jeannie Tourel. The orchestral accompaniment is not technically beyond reproach but the playing has total conviction and Tourel's is a performance to treasure. Only the post-Stravinskian eclecticism of Ben Haim's Sweet Psalmist of Israel is a little hard to take over half an hour. -- Gramophone [11/1992]