Released on Chandos Records, the album highlights the work of the Jewish-Viennese composer Frederick Block
Nominated for multiple GRAMMY, JUNO, and OPUS Klassik Awards, the ARC Ensemble focuses on the research and recovery of works that were suppressed and marginalized in the 20th century.
Continuing their contribution of new works to the chamber music repertoire, ARC Ensemble’s latest album “Chamber Works by Frederick Block” is the eighth project in its “Music in Exile” series for Chandos Records.
This album is the first commercial recording of Block’s works that contain hidden gems that deserve inclusion in the mainstream classical repertoire.
Frederick Block (1899-1945) was about to embark on an auspicious European career until the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. While briefly exiled in New York and dogged by premonitions of his imminent death, Block penned as many works as possible in the time he had left.
To support his family in New York, Block found work scoring and arranging for radio orchestras (principally CBS) and arranging orchestral works for publication in versions for solo piano, and produced copious chamber music. Following his passing in June 1945, Block’s legacy has remained unexplored until now.
This album features Block’s Piano Trio no. 2, op. 26 (1930), which contains allusions to Vienna and his String Quartet, op. 23 (1930), evoking the centuries-old marionette theater tradition that Block would have grown up with.
More works include his Suite for Clarinet and Piano, op. 73 (1944), an idiomatic work in five movements; and his Piano Quintet, op. 19 (1929), which features chromatic harmony reminiscent of Korngold and Mahler.
To purchase and listen to the album, click here.
Founded in 2003, Canada’s ARC Ensemble comprises senior faculty of The Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School with special guests drawn from the organization’s exceptional students and alumni.
This recording features violinists Erika Raum and Marie Bérard, violist Steven Dann, cellist Tom Wiebe, clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas, and pianist Kevin Ahfat.
“Of the many exiles we have investigated, Block’s story is among the most affecting, its poignancy deepened by the isolation of his final years, and the near total anonymity that followed his death,” said ARC Ensemble’s Artistic Director Simon Wynberg in a press release.
“This is sophisticated, stylish music, harmonically rich and emotionally intense,” Wynberg added. “While it certainly hearkens back to the world of the late 19th and early 20th century, Block’s language has a strongly original stamp.”
Wynberg came across the composer’s name while completing an online survey of the New York Performing Arts Library’s Special Collections, and subsequently uncovered many unknown works by Block including chamber music, orchestral works, operas and vocal music — all of which survive in the composer’s manuscripts.
The research also revealed a close partnership between the poet Langston Hughes and Block, who would set the former’s poems to music, and drew on Hughes’ texts for his opera Amerika.
“I was very much enchanted by your marvelous poems,” Block wrote to Hughes when he arrived in New York. “Yes, I had found a poet of our time for our time! A poet who is writing with blood and not with ink; I felt a real great heart and not the usual construction of a cold intellect.”
The WNYC and WQXR radio stations briefly kept Block’s works circulating in their broadcasts after his death; but until now, the last known performance of Block’s music was in 1951.
“He was a composer who didn’t belong to any school or 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, success, unfortunately not even about performances, just following honestly his urge to create,” expressed Block’s friend and colleague Otto Janowitz.
A video of ARC Ensemble members performing the third movement from Block’s String Quartet Op. 23, can be viewed below.