One of the most tuneful and lighthearted compositions by Swiss-born composer Ernest Bloch, this small-scale concertino is attractive and entertaining through its entire ten-minute length. Ernest Bloch (1880 - 1959) made his career in (and became a citizen of) the United States in part because he got stranded in that country when the dance company for which he was conductor went broke. The success of his String Quartet No. 1 in New York encouraged him to stay and he became one of the best-known composers on the American scene and an important teacher. This concertino represents a strong trend in his music after World War II. He had gained early fame in works that reflected his Jewish heritage, often with sumptuous, exotic orchestral scoring. (His Scholomo, Hebraic Rhapsody for cello and orchestra is the prime example.) But alongside them, he composed works with a neo-Classical orientation, including his piano quintet (1923) and his Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1924). Neo-Classicism became more important after his return to the United States from nearly a decade of residence in Switzerland in the 1930s. The concertino is played without pause. It begins with rhythmic, guitar-like plucked strings. While the main melodies are not specifically Jewish in origin, they do have a modal quality. The viola enters first, with a rustic "strolling" melody. Later, the flute comes in with its own solo statement of the same theme, while the viola begins the process of initiating what will be a contrapuntal interplay among the two solo instruments and parts of the orchestra. This movement is marked Allegro comodo. The slow movement is an Andante that flows out of a short slowing down by the orchestra. It has a quality that is somewhere between serene and grave. The theme's initial statement is on the low strings, then the viola and flute present it mainly as a single line, doubled at the octave. Three sudden fast measures marked Allegro lead straightaway to a Fugue. It starts with a very neo-Baroque quality, but softly, on viola. The second entrance is on flute and then parts of the orchestra have their turn. The work becomes more and more lighthearted and the end even approaches being silly. This is especially true in an "alternative" ending. In this version, the string section is joined by the rest of a full orchestral in normal scoring for two each woodwinds and 4-3-3-1 brass, and even a full percussion section, a drastic expansion of sound that occupies only the last 14 measures of the concertino.

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