Bloch's violin music is really so very violinistic, so full of rhetorical double-stopping and throatily impassioned descents to the G string, that it really seems to demand a Zukerman or a Chung to bring it off. In fact, though, I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it rather more when projected by Leonard Friedman's sound, which is more precise and athletic than opulent. It has something to do, I suspect, with the slightly cool purity of his tone, on the upper strings at least, being so well suited to Bloch's more meditative or restrained lyrical pages, which I find much more appealing than his strenuously gestural manner.
In the Second Sonata the rather Gallic cantabile idea and the later, surprising but oddly effective introduction of a quasi-Gregorian chant theme come off particularly well; so does the quirky 'second subject' in the middle movement of the First. I'm not saying that Friedman understates the more dramatic (or melodramatic) passages (though in Baal shem, where Bloch's rhetorical style rises to something like grandeur in the central ''Improvisation'', it could be argued that his playing is more elegant than eloquent), but his style seems to me to be better equipped to distil more interesting aspects of this music.
Friedman is never less than technically adroit, mind you; his keyboard partner is a resourceful artist and both of them clearly love Bloch's music a great deal. Fellow admirers need not hesitate. A carefully balanced recording and a clean, open acoustic.'