Block: Chamber Works

Friedrich Bloch (Frederick Block once he arrived in America) was born in Vienna in 1899. His father, Sigmund, supported music as a pastime, but opposed it as a career. His heart was changed when his son returned home unscathed at the end of World War I, and his financial support enabled the young composer to study, first with the Czech composer Josef Bohuslav Foerster, and then with Hans Gál at the University of Vienna. Through the 1920s and 1930s, his success grew, and performances and broadcasts of his chamber works led to orchestral premières with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and eventually to opera: his third, Samum, was extremely successful. Following the Anschluss, Jewish involvement in Austrian institutions, professional life, and education ended, and a ruinous exit tax was imposed on those who could afford to leave. Frederick shipped his piano and personal effects to New York, and moved to London before emigrating in 1940. After Frederick arrived in New York, his output remained high, and included three symphonies, Sunrise for mixed chorus and orchestra, an opera, Esther, several sets of piano pieces, a Viennese Suite for string orchestra and piano, and a large body of suites, sonatas, and chamber works. Unmentioned in his catalogue are the seventy-plus piano transcriptions of substantial orchestral works by other composers, all of which were issued by New York publishers. He also composed and arranged music for radio, principally for CBS. Sadly, he was taken by cancer at the age of forty-six.