Ernest Bloch was born in Geneva in 1880 to an assimilated Jewish family. Before the war, he was among the most played and appreciated composers. People even called him the fourth great ˜B,” after Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. It is not that people now no longer know his name, but they usually do not get any further than his cello concerto.

The symphonic poems Hiver-Printemps are very evocative. Together with the beautiful song cycle ‘Poèmes d’Automne’, composed for the texts of Béatrix Rodès, Bloch’s lover at the time, and sung very emotionally by Sophie Koch (Kleenex at hand?), they form, as it were, a kind of ˜Seasons”, from which only the summer is missing.

The suite for viola is among Bloch’s best compositions and one cannot imagine a better performance than Tabea Zimmermann’s.

The CD’s title, ˜20th Century Portraits” is somewhat misleading because most of the works were composed between 1905 and 1919 and their idiom is strongly anchored in late romanticism and the Fin de Siècle. Only the overwhelming ‘Proclamation’ for trumpet and orchestra dates from 1950.

The Deutches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Steven Sloane, plays in a very animated way.