Bloch’s so-called Jewish Cycle—the Israel Symphony, Schelomo, Trois Poèmes Juifs and the String Quartet—earned the composer the kind of esteem in America that had been...

Bloch’s so-called Jewish Cycle—the Israel Symphony, Schelomo, Trois Poèmes Juifs and the String Quartet—earned the composer the kind of esteem in America that had been lacking in Europe. The Israel Symphony, premièred in Carnegie Hall in 1917, is the cycle’s centrepiece and originally intended as a gigantic three-part work, but later reduced in size. Powerful and evocative, it also fuses pastoral and sensuous elements in a rich tapestry. The award-winning Suite for Viola and orchestra or piano is a rhapsodic but cyclical tour de force, a ‘vision of the Far East’, in Bloch’s own words.