{"id":109073,"date":"2024-10-31T12:30:48","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T16:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=109073"},"modified":"2024-10-31T14:00:03","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T18:00:03","slug":"interview-arc-ensembles-simon-wynberg-talks-discovering-music-frederick-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2024\/10\/31\/interview-arc-ensembles-simon-wynberg-talks-discovering-music-frederick-block\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW | ARC Ensemble\u2019s Simon Wynberg Talks About Discovering The Music Of Frederick Block"},"content":{"rendered":"
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L-R: ARC Ensemble Artistic Director Simon Wynberg (Photo: Stuart Lowe); Image from the cover of courtesy of Chandos Records<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The chamber music of Frederick Block, the Jewish-Viennese composer you\u2019ve never heard of, is the focus of the eighth Music in Exile release by Toronto\u2019s ARC Ensemble. Music in Exile Vol. 8: Chamber Works by Frederick Block was released in October 2024.<\/p>\n

The GRAMMY nominated ARC Ensemble has made the discovery and rehabilitation of the works of composers whose careers were derailed by the Nazi regime and the Second World War its focus.<\/p>\n

The concept of \u201cMusic in Exile\u201d can take many forms. When it comes to composer Frederick Block, it\u2019s a story of young promise that was squelched when the Nazi annexation of Austria made his life there untenable.<\/p>\n

We spoke to ARC\u2019s Artistic Director Simon Wynberg about Block and his music.<\/p>\n

Frederick Block<\/h3>\n

While Wynberg is involved in a constant effort to dig up forgotten scores and artists from that period, most of the time, he has an idea of what he\u2019s looking for. Block, however, was a complete unknown that he wasn\u2019t familiar with at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, and neither were any of my colleagues,\u201d says Wynberg. \u201cThey\u2019d looked him up, after I mentioned him, and they found some contemporary newspaper reports about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in 1899 into a wealthy family, Block\u2019s life as a composer wasn\u2019t really typical of his contemporaries.<\/p>\n

Frederick began studying piano at the age of nine. His parents actually discouraged him from a career in music, a path that was set aside during his military service in World War I. On his return, he took matters into his own hands, and enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory.<\/p>\n

He debut as a composer took place in Vienna in 1922, and it sparked a career that developed gradually. Frederick\u2019s music was broadcast on the radio in Prague and Vienna, and his reputation grew throughout the 1920s and 1930.<\/p>\n

Starting out, his work consisted largely of smaller chamber pieces. As his career gained momentum in the 1930s, he turned to orchestral works, and operas, of which he wrote six between 1933 and 1937. He would later write another two, including both music and libretti.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very keen on opera,\u201d Wynberg says.<\/p>\n

1936 saw the height of his career as composer when his opera Samum was produced by the Slovak National Opera in Bratislava. One of the performances was broadcast nationally, and the work received a wave of acclaim from both critics and audiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was 1936, and it looked as if his career was really on an upward trajectory. That opera, in particular, I believe, marked what could have been a fairly significant career.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1938, however, his life was under threat after the Nazi annexation of Austria. Block left for London, where he waited about a year for the paperwork to travel to North America. In the meantime, he met and married his wife.<\/p>\n

In June 1940, the couple made the move to New York. Frederick and Ina Block settled in Washington Heights, New York City \u2014 then dubbed Frankfurt on the Hudson for its preponderance of German-Jewish emigres. It\u2019s a moniker that endured for about a half century, from 1933 to 1983. It was a welcoming environment, but not necessarily a hotbed of European high culture.<\/p>\n

After settling in New York, finding work became his most pressing issue. Block found a way of generating income, but it wasn\u2019t through the orchestral work. He found a well-paid niche creating orchestral arrangements for CBS, along with piano transcriptions of major orchestral works for a music publisher. Block himself didn\u2019t count the arrangements when he kept records of his own composed work.<\/p>\n

During his time in New York, he told many people of his premonitions of looming death. It spurred him into setting as many of his works down on paper as possible. In New York, alongside his commercial work, he completed an opera (Esther), three symphonies, four suites, several chamber pieces, along with works for solo piano, and vocal music.<\/p>\n

True to his dark visions, Block died in on June 1, 1945.<\/p>\n

Falling into obscurity<\/h3>\n

\u201cHe really is locked into the vaults of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of that can be ascribed to his roots. With his family background, and a family trust to live on, Block didn\u2019t need to have the public success to survive. He didn\u2019t even have to publish, free to pursue wherever his talents led him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t really interested in promoting himself,\u201d Simon notes. \u201cYou have this curious situation.\u201d Even during his early career years in Vienna, where he was a teacher and musician, few of his works were published. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t associated with any conservatory or university.\u201d<\/p>\n

On arriving in the US, however, the latter fact would come back to haunt him. He applied for the assistance available for refugee artists from various sources in his new country; however, without the formal credentials and association with an established institution, he found himself competing with PhDs and professors, and shut out of any funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a bit miffed about that.\u201d Even as a teacher in Vienna, Wynberg points out, Block would shun the high profile kids with wealthy parents in favour of talented students without parental clout. It left a promising career with a momentum he was just building fizzling out before his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of many people who were sidelined,\u201d Simon notes.<\/p>\n

The miracle is that there is anything left to discover at this late date. With most published work done for CBS, and his contemporaries also gone, there was no one left to keep his work alive at that level. That boils down to the wife he met and married in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis wife was extraordinarily supportive of him,\u201d Wynberg says. After Block\u2019s death, she organized a few concerts of his music in New York City in an attempt to perpetuate his legacy. However, while she had supporters, five years or so after his death, he began to sink into obscurity as the classical music world lost interest in what was to them unknown music.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut his wife kept all of his material,\u201d he explains. On her own death in 2000, all of her belongings, including Frederick\u2019s documents, were passed along to a friend in New Jersey name Cathy. \u201cShe was the executor of Ina\u2019s will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathy donated boxes of Block\u2019s papers, including a treasure trove of unpublished music manuscripts, to the New York Public Library<\/a>. That\u2019s where Wynberg discovered Block \u2014 in a reference to the NYPL\u2019s acquired collection.<\/p>\n

However, Cathy discovered a few more music manuscripts, and came across ARC and Simon and their work online. She emailed Wynberg to tell him she had scores from both Block and \u201cother composers\u201d, as she described them (Wynberg\u2019s transcriptions). Then, a month later, she discovered several more boxes of material, including photographs and diaries, that she had also stored and forgotten about. She got back in touch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going down next month to have a look,\u201d Wynberg says. While most of the music seems to have found its way to the NYPL system, there may yet be even more music to rediscover.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story continues. This hasn\u2019t happened before,\u201d he says. The material has been with her for almost a quarter of a century now, as he points out. \u201cIt\u2019s really quite an interesting story.\u201d<\/p>\n