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Thomas Bloch : Missa Cantate etc

Missa Cantate
Sancta Maria
Cold Song
Christ Hall Blues
Christ Hall Postlude

Jörg Waschinski (male soprano)
Thomas Bloch (rare instruments: glass harmonica, crystal bells, waterphone, bells, ondes martenot)
Jacques Dupriez (viola) & David Coulter (musical saw)
Paderewski Philharmonic Orchestra/Fernand Quattrocchi

Naxos 8.572489

With electronic treatment, one pure-voiced "sopranist", Jörg Waschinski, takes up to 12 parts on some tracks of this peculiar production.

Thomas Bloch (no relation to Ernest) began composing at 7 and interested then, c.1960, in avant-garde composers... Fully educated at Strasbourg, Paris, Darmstadt etc he emerged as an eclectic, populist musician (3000 concerts in 40 countries & >100 recordings) Bloch has a particular interest in music to accompany visual images, a successful specialist performer and collector of rare instruments.

It is extrardinary how boring is the mostly slow music here produced with such exotica. If there is any substance in it all, it is a disc that cries out for DVD instead of an old fashioned CD; nothing here as lively as some of Bloch's YouTube clips...

Try instead the imagination shown by Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür with a symphony orchestra on a disc reviewed yesterday, which we did not find "inconsequential" (pace The Guardian); tastes are often so individual that Musical Pointers has eschewed offering star ratings alongside our opinions.

Absolutely not recommended...

Peter Grahame Woolf