by David Dubal

DUBAL: I know that you are fond of Ernest Bloch's music. Since his death his music has suffered an eclipse. He seems hard to put in a category.

MENUHIN: Very hard for the people who like to pigeonhole, also Bloch's rhapsodic style is hard to formulate, since his music is very largely a series of statements and meditations, although he is the most famous Swiss composer, and he always returned there, and loved the mountains. Bloch is essentially a Jewish composer, in his dee and guttural feeling for the Jewish cry of despair.

DUBAL: I think his art is deeply penetrating. The string quartets are an extraordinary contribution to the form. There is a burning passion, also a frustration, as well as a sarcastic irony at times.

MENUHIN: I fully agree, and he was tortured -- a prophetic man, who looked astonishingly like an Old Testament face. He wrote beautifully for the violin -- you know he was a very good player. Do you know that the first piece I ever played by a living composer was by Bloch, a wonderful piece called Avodah, which he composed for me. I was a child of about seven or eight. Bloch was a great teacher. And he was the director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

pp. 40-41

ISBN: 0-15-122586-9