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Bloch’s Concerto Symphonique is a work on the grand scale of the Brahms concertos, the technically demanding piano part placed in equal partnership with the orchestra. Premiered in 1949 at the Edinburgh Festival, its acerbic melodic material seems, at least on the surface, to be far removed from the Hebraic intensity of the much better-known Schelomo. Nonetheless, the epic sonorities of the outer movements conjure up a vision of biblical grandeur not dissimilar in character to Miklós Rósza’s film score to Ben Hur.

In three movements, all basically fast (a relentless pesante opening with a baleful six-note motif; a percussive scherzo which Bloch himself called a danse macabre whose trio provides the only slower, but hardly serene, music of the concerto; and the tumultuous, martial finale), the piano functions both as soloist and, in quasi-obbligato fashion, as a member of the orchestra.