According to Ernest Bloch, the creative artist should ''make love and create beautiful works'', an apt credo coming from a composer who was said (by his own wife!) to have taken ''at least'' 23 mistresses. Yet no matter how you rate Bloch as a composer, there can be little doubt that much of his music is beautiful—the closing ''Springtime'' from Evocations being a fair case in point. And surely no one who is responsive to delicate textures and ruminative melodic lines would voluntarily pass by the late Two Last Poems, composed when he was already terminally ill and perhaps his very last work.
The earliest opus here, the Three Jewish Poems, was written in 1913 and hints towards Respighi's Roman triptych (especially in the closing minutes of ''Rite''), all three components of which had yet to be composed. However, the ''Rite'' also has something of Copland's strong simplicity and further reminds us that Bloch was a passionate devotee of the 'Great Outdoors', especially in later life. It was in 1917 that he conducted the work's Boston premiere, apparently to great acclaim; and although the 'Jewish' element provides a strong linking theme (the harmonic writing has an unmistakably Eastern complexion), the orchestration and manner of musical exposition are as appealingly trans-national as, say, Ravel, Richard Strauss or Bax.
The Evocations incorporate ''pentatonic scales and colouristic instrumentation'' (to quote flautist Alexa Still's excellent booklet-note) and although I found the central ''Houang Ti'' a little over-worked, the outer movements are quite magical. Still projects a beautiful tone for the wistful, self-possessed Two Last Poems, and it says something for Bloch's creative (and spiritual) development that the work's ''Funeral Music'' is more thoughtful and accepting than the raging ''Funeral Procession'' that closes the Three Jewish Poems, composed some 45 years earlier.
Bloch's subtly coloured canvasses seem custom-built for an age that is increasingly attracted to late-romantic musical tone-painting. And yet it seems to me a great pity that these admirable works are barely known outside their respective publishing houses. We are therefore greatly indebted to James Sedares and the excellent New Zealand Symphony Orchestra for these clear-headed, sensitively turned performances, all three of which are extremely well engineered. Anyone with a taste for atmospheric musical evocations cannot fail to enjoy them.'