Born in Geneva on July 24, 1880, Ernest Bloch left his native Switzerland in 1917 and emigrated to the United States. He left an impressive amount of high-quality works. Among his many symphonic pieces, however, only the cello rhapsody Schelomo (1915/16) has acquired a permanent place in the concert repertoire. He had apparently been inspired to write it when he saw a statue of King Solomon made by the wife of a fellow cellist in Switzerland. He wrote that “it is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible; the freshness and naiveté of the Patriarchs; the violence that is evident in the prophetic books; the Jew’s savage love of justice; the despair of the preacher of Jerusalem; the sorrow and the immensity of the Book of Job; the sensuality of the Song of Songs.” Although Bloch did not use any authentic Hebrew material in his “Hebrew Rhapsody”, the listener is immediately ushered into an exotic, archaic world in which the ancient prophets, the Scriptures and the construction of the Temple are virtually palpable. There is a sense of timelessness that is the expression of true art. The recording of Bloch’s Schelomo features the great Mstislav Rostropovich as the soloist, with the Orchestre National de France led by Leonard Bernstein.