Hugh Canning
The Sunday Times
July 2012

Schelomo, Bloch’s 'Rhapsodie hébraïque', is still the best-known work by the Swiss-born American composer (1880-1959). It appears to have fallen out of fashion, so Natalie Clein’s inspired collection of his three cello works on Jewish themes—the others the later “symphonic poem with cello obbligato”, Voice in the Wilderness, and the usually piano-accompanied From Jewish Life, in a charming arrangement for strings and harp by Christopher Palmer—with Bruch’s Kol Nidrei (1881), is rare and welcome. Her impassioned, sensitive playing finds willing collaborators in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and their former principal conductor.