Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque for Violoncello and Orchestra is the final work of composer Ernest Bloch’s “Jewish Cycle.” and among the most difficult pieces in the cello literature. When it was premiered in 1921, the critic wrote of the piece that Bloch had “reached the perfection of his music... The violoncello with its ample breadth of phrasing, now melodic and with moments of superb lyricism, now declamatory and with robustly dramatic lights and shades, lends itself to a reincarnation of Solomon and all his glory... The orchestral palpitates in all colors of the rainbow; from the vigorous and transparent orchestration there emerge waves of sound that seem to soar upward in stupendous vortices and fall back in a shower of myriads of iridescent drops.”