Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez have already issued one Bloch CD including the two violin and piano sonatas (Hyperion, 4/05) and this disc completes their survey of his violin music. The two unaccompanied suites date from 1958, the year before Bloch’s death; they combine a chromatic idiom with a strong sense of tonality. Occasionally the music seems to lack individuality – the third movement of the First Suite is almost like pastiche Bach and its final cadence is academically predictable – but more often one’s attention is caught and held by the expressive melodic writing and, in both suites, by a compelling sense of continuity. Shaham revels in Bloch’s demanding yet imaginatively idiomatic violin writing. In the solo suites, as well as the more extravagantly emotional pieces with piano on Jewish themes, he enters wholeheartedly into the feeling of the music yet retains a measure of balance and restraint – the vibrato isn’t exaggerated and a feeling of rhapsodic freedom is achieved without sacrificing natural flow.

Bloch’s popularity has waned somewhat in recent decades, and the Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim (1897–1984) is even more poorly represented in the CD catalogue. His Solo Sonata, written for Yehudi Menuhin, is, however, a masterly work, not at all original in form and idiom, perhaps, but full of memorable ideas. Shaham’s playing of the central Lento e sotto voce is stunningly beautiful. And the “Improvisation and Dance”, a folk-style showpiece after the manner of the Bartók rhapsodies, inspires both Shaham and Erez to brilliant feats of virtuosity.