von keinem anderen Dirigenten aufgeführt worden. hämmre zur Scheibe die runde Wölbung der Wel t , Unsere Einspielung in Saarbrücken im Jahr 2000 (erst ze r s c h l a g ‘ die Formen der Natur, alle Keime ersticke, die zweite Aufführung, sechzehn Jahre und zwei die undankbar den Menschen machen! AMERICAN CLASSICS Monate nach der Premiere), bedeutete für mich die Transcendental Var i a t i o n s , ein ekstatisches Wer k Erfüllung eines lang gehegten Wunsches. Das für Streichorchester, ist eng mit Rochbergs Drittem Saarbrücker Orchester hatte einige Tage zuvor Streichquartett von 197 1-72 verwandt – einem der öffentliche Aufführungen von Rochbergs Vi o l i n k o n z e r t umwälzendsten Werke der amerikanischen Musik gegeben, aber die Fünfte Sinfonie war als reine unserer Zeit. Das Quartett ist das erste Werk, in dem Studioproduktion geplant. Wir spielten die âtakes‘ in Rochberg nicht länger mit der âTonalität‘ als Rekordzeit ein, sodass wir zweieinhalb Stunden eher essentiellem Bestandteil seiner Ausdruckspalette fertig waren als vorgesehen. Das Orchester erklärte flirtet, sondern sie vorbehaltlos umarmt, indem er die GEORGE sich bereit, das Werk noch einmal als Ganzes zu Musik mit Virtuosität und einer höchst persönlichen spielen, und zwar als eine Art Privataufführung für den Stimme tränkt. Obwohl es sich um eine âdiatonische‘ Komponisten und seine Frau Gene. Dieses âKon z e r t ‘ Komposition handelt, enthält die Partitur unzählige ROCHBERG für zwei Personen gehört zu den bewegendsten melodische Kollisionen, wobei oft genug Augenblicken meines Lebens. überraschende Dissonanzen durch multiple Vor h a l t e Black Sounds ist ein abwechselnd zorniges, ödes oder komplexe kanonische Schnittpunkte produziert und trostloses Werk, das einen engen Bezug zu den werden, die vor dem zwanzigsten Jahrhundert 1964 entstandenen A p o c a l y p t i c a für großes undenkbar gewesen wären. Bläserensemble, Klavier und zwölf Schlaginstrumente Der Dirigent Vilem Sokol schlug Rochberg 197 5 Symphony No. 5 aufweist. Es gibt nur wenige inhaltliche Änderungen in eine Bearbeitung des langsamen Satzes des Quartetts dieser Bearbeitung für zwölf Holz- und Blechbläser, für Streichorchester vor. Bei den so entstandenen Black Sounds Klavier/Celesta und zwölf Schlaginstrumente, obwohl Transcendental Variations handelt es sich um eine be z e i c h n e n d e r weise die Kadenzen für eine Batterie gründliche Neubearbeitung. Die Texturen sind auf eine Transcendental Variations von ungestimmten Trommeln und Tamtams in Weise ausgeweitet, die gegenüber den intimen A p o c a l y p t i c a für Black Sounds als notierte Klängen des ursprünglichen Quartetts eine opulente Paukenpassagen neu geschrieben wurden. B l a c k Klangfülle erzeugt und dem Werk großartige Tiefe und S o u n d s ist eine Auftragskomposition des Lincoln Leuchtkraft verleiht. Der Begriff âTranszendenz‘ ist für Center für eine Fernsehsendung vom 24. September Rochberg unlösbar verbunden mit seiner Auffassung 1965, in der das Stück zuerst als ein Ballett von Anna von Zeit, oder besser von Zeitlosigkeit. Die sieben Sokolow unter dem Titel The Act, der szenischen Variationen sind in einer auf den ersten Blick trügerisch Darstellung eines Mordes, aufgeführt wurde. Die simplen Weise angeordnet. Das eigentliche Partitur der Ap o c a l y p t i c a enthält als Einleitung die âT h e m a ‘ wird erst im Finale enthüllt. Die Var i a t i o n e n folgenden Zeilen aus Shakespeares König Lear, die transzendieren nicht nur jegliche religiöse Bedeutung, auch in Black Sounds ihre Gültigkeit bewahren: sie weisen sie vielmehr zurück. Das wahre Innenleben Saarbrcken Radio Blast, Winde, bis eure Wangen bersten! tobt! wütet! bleibt verborgen. Während das Werk mit antiken Symphony Orchestra Ihr Katarakte und Orkane, ergießt euch, Mystizismen spielt, bleibt es am Ende selbst ein bis ihr die Wetterhähne unserer Kirchtürme ertränkt habt! unergründliches Geheimnis. Christopher Lyndon-Gee Ihr schwefligen, gedankentötenden Feu e r , Boten der eichenspaltenden Blitzschläge, Christopher Lyndon-Gee versengt mein weißes Haupt! Und du, tosender Donner, Deutsche Fassung: Bernd Delfs

8.559115 8 George Rochberg (b. 1918): George Rochberg (geb.1918) Symphony No. 5 ¥ Black Sounds ¥ Transcendental Variations Fünfte Sinfonie · Black Sounds · Transcendental Variations The key that will open George Rochberg’s music to expressivity of the strict twelve-tone environment. George Rochberg wurde am 5. Juli 1918 in Pat e r s o n Gegensatz zu dem, was man bis dahin von ihm the willing, the curious, but especially to the Having mastered the idiom, he was far ahead of his im US-Bundesstaat New Jersey geboren. Bereits gewöhnt war. Sie ist ein Destillat seiner âharten‘ “innocent” ear lies not in the conventional wisdom time in seeking to go beyond it. während seiner College-Zeit trat er als Pianist in Romantik: voller Expressivität, aber niemals als that declares him the first “post-modernist” for his The oft-repeated assertion that it was Jazzbands in New York auf, bevor er 1939 sein Selbstzweck, voller Leidenschaft, aber mit zwingender openness to a complex mix of musical languages, but predominantly personal tragedy that led Rochberg to Kompositionsstudium an der Mannes School of Music Logik. Die Musik wird von einem aus nur wenigen begann, wo Hans Weisse, und Leopold In t e r vallen bestehenden thematischen Ker n m a t e r i a l rather in seeking to enter the composer’s abandon dodecaphony and embrace tonality, is not Mannes seine Lehrer waren. Nach dem Zw e i t e n zusammengehalten – brillant manipuliert, um ex t r a o r d i n a r y understanding of the nature of time. entirely borne out by the facts. His evolution towards Weltkrieg setzte er sein Studium am Curtis Institute of musikalische Motive von unterschiedlichstem As long ago as 1963, Rochberg, in The New Image a multiplicity of simultaneous languages was already Music in Philadelphia bei Rosario Scalero fort. 195 1 Charakter zu erzeugen. Ganz und gar ungewöhnlich ist of Music, wrote that the successive revolutions of well in train from his earliest compositions. Rochberg erhielt er einen Direktorenposten beim Musikverlag auch die Gliederung dieses Werks – einer twelve-tone composition and of the post-war speaks of his use of twelve-tone techniques as Theodore Presser und 1960 wurde er Vorsitzender der durchkomponierten Komposition von 28 Minuten avant-garde had brought about a liberation that engendering a “hard” Romanticism – one has only to Musikfakultät der Universität Pennsylvania. 19 7 9 Länge – in sieben Hauptabteilungen: Introduktion, “permits sounds to create their own context”. This look at the slow movement of the Second Symphony, erfolgte seine Ernennung zum Annenberg Professor of Episode I, Durchführung I, Episode II, Durchführung liberation of sound from tonal harmonic functions, Rochberg’s “serial” work par excellence, to see that the Humanities, und diesen Lehrauftrag erfüllte er bis II, Episode III, Finale. Jede der Episoden ist von led to “the overthrow of a long-dominant temporal the tone row yields music that alternates between melt- zu seiner Emeritierung im Jahre 198 3 . kontemplativem, traumähnlichem Charakter, während st r u c t u r e ”; to a world in which conglomerates of pure ing, elegiac beauty and desperate explosions of Bereits seine ersten substanziellen Kom p o s i t i o n e n der Eröffnungs - und Schlussteil sowie die wurden mit Preisen ausgezeichnet. So erhielt er 195 3 Durchführungsabschnitte jeweils in schnellem Tem p o sound are able to interact in ways that are not anguish; ebullient self-confidence and profound für seine Night Music den George Gershwin Memorial komponiert sind, getrieben von Ver z w e i f l u n g s s c h r e i e n necessarily hidebound by structural considerations. tr a g e d y . Award; hinzu kamen u.a. Naumberg am Rande von Chaos und Zusammenbruch. Und doch “Subjective man,” writes Rochberg, “v i e w s George Rochberg’s relationship with the past is Schallplattenpreise, Guggenheim Fe l l o w s h i p s , enthält die zweite Episode eine Art Waldmusik von existence as change; himself and his history at the not one of nostalgia; it is one of intimate, living Ehrendoktorate, ein Fellowship an der Amerikanischen betörender Schönheit, in der der Ruf von vier Hörnern center of a process of becoming... Subjective man fa m i l i a r i t y . Indeed, he has said, in Reflections on the Akademie in Rom, ein Fulbright-Stipendium 1951 - 5 2 mit der Ferne der Zeit zu verschmelzen scheint, dem cannot transcend time; he is trapped in it. However, Renewal of Music, “History will not help us; but the sowie im Jahr 2000 der ASCAP Award für sein kaum wahrnehmbaren Echo einer verlorenen Epoche when man seizes on the present moment of existence as past, which is ever-present, can”. Le b e n s w e r k . des Roland-Liedes. Auch die dritte Episode beschäftigt the only ‘real’ time, he spatializes his existence; that is, Rochberg is never about regret, borrowing or 1983 wandte sich John Edwards, Manager des sich mit der Zeit, und zwar mit dem Zeitalter Einsteins he fills his present with objects that take on … a state of quotation (even if only quotation “in kind”). The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, an Rochberg mit dem und Hawkings: die âkosmische Uhr‘. Die Musik der pe r m a n e n c e .” Thus did the composer allow broader Universal Mind, which is there to be embraced by a Kompositionsauftrag für ein Werk zur 600-Jahrfeier ersten Episode dringt sogar bis ins Finale vor, in dem der Stadt im Jahre 1986; ein anonymer Mäzen, so ein weitatmiges Cellosolo sich an der zeitlosen Wel t means of expression to be added to his vocabulary, composer humble enough to deny ego and the flawed Edwards, habe sich ausdrücklich ein âKonzert für festzuklammern und das Eindringen der öden constantly enlarging it, making possible what he later search for “originality” at all costs, transcends Time Blechbläser und Orchester‘ erbeten. Rochbergs Wirklichkeit bis zuletzt abzuwehren scheint. came to call an “all-at-once world”. and Space. Denying individualism, seeing the creative Antwort: „Wenn ich meine neue Sinfonie schreibe, „âIn medias res‘: so wollte ich diese aus By 1959, Rochberg was lionized as America’s first artist as a representative of the endless procession of werde ich das Blech nicht vernachlässigen!“ Einige verschiedenen Teilen bestehende Fünfte Sinfonie and greatest Master of composition in a serial the human condition, the purveyor of our collective Monate später traf Rochberg mit Georg Solti beginnen lassen“, schreibt der Komponist in seinen in language. His 1955-56 Second Symphony, taken up me m o r y, allows the composer to gather the entirety of zusammen. Der Komponist, dem ein großes Orchester Vorbereitung befindlichen Memoiren. „Als ob alles and enthusiastically premièred by George Szell, experience into a single, integrated language. mit vierter Trompete und zusätzlichem Schlagwerk bereits begonnen hat – irgendwo außerhalb des seemed to lay out a path for him as one of the leaders At the heart of Rochberg’s music are an vorschwebte, erzählte dem Maestro von der Idee eines Hörbaren – in einem Wüten von heftigen Emotionen – of the American av a n t - g a r d e . And yet, not even three acceptance of the past as an integral ingredient of a âK onzerts für Blechbläser‘. „Die stammte von mir“, plötzlich umgibt es dich – ist es da und entführt dich mit years after its première, he was rethinking his rich present; an understanding that an art which entgegnete Solti, und natürlich war er mit einer groß seinen beharrlichen Rufen, die durch den Tu m u l t language, already dissatisfied with the limitations of insists on “originality” in its every utterance can have besetzten Sinfonie sofort einverstanden. hindurch schneiden, in seine Wel t . “ Rochbergs Fünfte Sinfonie steht in krassem Se l t s a m e r weise ist dieses Riesenwerk nach Solti 8.559115 2 8.559115 7 Symphony Orchestra of Saarbrücken Radio, Germany no context and no hope of communication. His music other honours have accumulated in ever greater The Solemn Inauguration of Radio Sarrebruck, with the participation of the newly formed Orchestre liberates the contemporary musician fearlessly to draw profusion. In 1996, his manuscripts and papers were Symphonique took place on Sunday 17th March,1946. A programme of Berlioz,Saint-Saëns,and Debussy was upon, and develop in his own voice, the inheritance of acquired for the archives at the played as this, like so many other ravaged towns of war-scarred Europe, struggled to reestablish normality of his artistic forbears without being derivative, in the Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. life, especially cultural life. Saarbrücken lies at the edge of the magnificent wine-growing and pâté-de-foie knowledge that there is a language, that the many-hued In the words of the Washington Pos t , “Ro c h b e r g districts of Alsace, not far from Louis XIV’s fortress city of Saarlouis, amidst a region contested for centuries. palette of the great masters has not been darkened presents the rare spectacle of a composer who has made At the close of the second world war, it found itself French. In 1956,its citizens voted in a referendum to rejoin forever by the cultural pathologies of the twentieth his peace with tradition while maintaining a strikingly Germany. Two miles from the present-day French-German border, they rejoice in their cosmopolitan mix. ce n t u r y. individual profile... he succeeds in transforming the Over the last 57 years,the symphony orchestra of Saarland Radio has become one of the most distinguished “The hope of contemporary music”, writes sublime concepts of traditional music into contemporary ensembles in Germany. Especially noteworthy were the thirteen years, beginning in 1971, of the music Rochberg, “lies in learning how to reconcile all manner la n g u a g e .” directorship of Hans Zender, a pioneering composer-conductor, whose annual Music in the Twentieth Century of opposites, contradictions, paradoxes; the past with the In 1983 John Edwards, manager of the Chicago Festival initiated commissions and first performances of works by Messiaen,Lachenmann,Zimmermann,Rihm, present, tonality with . That is why, in my most Symphony Orchestra, sounded out Rochberg about Berio, Maderna, Nono and dozens of other contemporary figures. Consequently, this orchestra shows great recent music, I have tried to utilize these in combinations the possibility of writing a substantial work to mark the virtuosity and freedom of playing style in many idioms. Since 2000, their music director has been Günther which reassert the primal values of music.” city’s forthcoming sesquicentennial in 1986. An Herbig, who has brought to the orchestra equal finesse in the great Austro-German repertoire of earlier times. George Rochberg was born in Paterson, New anonymous patron had specifically indicated a Jersey on 5th July, 1918. An accomplished pianist who “Concerto for Brass and Orchestra”; Rochberg replied, worked his way through college playing in jazz bands in “When I write my new Symphony, I will not neglect the Christopher Lyndon-Gee New York City, he began formal studies of br a s s ! ” Christopher Lyndon-Gee was nominated for a GRAMMY in 1998 for Best Orchestral Performance for the composition in 1939 at the Mannes School of Music, Some months later, Rochberg was meeting with ground-breaking complete works of (Marco Polo releases), while, in 2001-2002, recordings for under Hans Weisse, George Szell and Leopold Georg Solti, who had already conducted his Vi o l i n Naxos of Arcana and other works by Varèse, with the Polish National Radio Orchestra won rave notices Mannes. He was seriously wounded during wartime Co n c e r t o and the symphonic poem Imago Mundi. The worldwide. Gramophone, Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, and Fanfare have all recognized his work, while se r vice in Europe, subsequently resuming his studies at co m p o s e r , hoping that he would be allowed a large Australian critics’ organizations named him Artist of the Year and Best Opera Conductor, the latter for his the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 194 5 orchestra, including fourth trumpet and extra conducting of the world première of Lar ry Sitsky’s The Golem at Sydney Opera House. with Rosario Scalero. From 195 1, he was Director of percussion, related the “Concerto for Brass” story. Also a widely performed composer,Lyndon-Gee was honoured as Composer Laureate of the Onassis Publications for the music publishing house Theodore Smiling broadly, Solti revealed, “that was me!”, and of Foundation,Athens,in 2001,has won the Adolf Spivakovsky Prize, the Sounds Australian Award (three times), Pr e s s e r , in 1960 becoming Chairman of the Music course readily agreed to a full-scale symphony. and two MacDowell Fellowships. He is currently working on major orchestral works including The Auschwitz Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In 197 9 Conventional assumptions about Rochberg’s work Poems and Socrates’ Death, the latter commissioned for première at Canterbury Cathedral, in his native he was designated Annenberg Professor of the are radically subverted by this monumental work. The England, in 2004. During 2003, his setting of an ancient Greek Ode under the title The Temple of Athena Humanities, retiring from the University in 198 3 . Fifth Symphony embodies the distillation par Pronaea was premièred in New York. Rochberg’s music has been honoured since his excellence of Rochberg’s concept of “hard” Lyndon-Gee studied under Arthur Hutchings and Rudolf Schwartz in Great Britain, Franco Ferrara and earliest substantial compositions, his Night Music Romanticism: expressive, yet never indulgent; Goffredo Petrassi in Italy, and Igor Markevitch at Monte Carlo. Hearing him conduct a student concert in Rome, receiving the George Gershwin Memorial Award in passionate, yet stringently argued. Its seamless Leonard Bernstein invited him to Tanglewood, where he met Bruno Maderna,becoming the latter’s assistant in 1953. Since then, Naumberg Recording Aw a r d s , integration of differing modes of expression is, indeed, Milan. Erich Leinsdorf and Maurice Abravanel were also influential on his work. He enjoyed a busy early career Guggenheim Fellowships, Honorary Doctorates, a no more or less varied in voice than one might as a pianist, specializing in contemporary repertoire, and over two hundred new works were written for him. Fellowship at the , and encounter – or expect! – in any Mahler Symphony. The Today, his hectic freelance career includes regular visits to orchestras in Germany, Italy, England,The Fulbright Scholarship in 195 0 - 5 1 (the year in which he music is held together by core thematic material of Netherlands, Poland,Australia,New Zealand, Russia and several other countries. He serves also as Head of the Conducting School at New York’s Adelphi University, combining this with constant travel. met and befriended ), the ASCAP merely a few intervals, brilliantly manipulated to Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000; and countless engender musical motives of vastly differing 6 8.559115 3 8.559115 characters, but often sounding an echo of the five-note pannetone he had brought, to which Varèse was The ecstatic Transcendental Var i a t i o n s for string string orchestra. The resulting Tr a n s c e n d e n t a l “tu r n ” of Mahler’s Ni n t h and of the final “Ewig” indifferent; music alone the consuming topic of orchestra is a work derived closely from Rochberg’s Var i a t i o n s are music thoroughly recomposed in terms movement of Das Lied von der Erde. conversation. Varèse was already ill, but in the time left Third String Quartet of 197 1-72 one of the watershed of registration and sonorities. Its textures are filled out Totally groundbreaking is the form of the work, to him, the two composers formed a bond whose works in American, indeed in western art music of our to impart a richness quite different in scope from the which is a continuous composition of 28 minutes, in mutual admiration has been immortalized in this “ time. The Qu a r t e t is the first work of Rochberg’s in intimate qualities of the original string quartet, seven major sections: Opening Statement, Episode I, homage to Edgard Var è s e ”, Black Sounds. Indeed, their which he no longer flirts with “tonality” as an essential stretching the musical vision heavenward, giving it Development I, Episode 2, Development 2, Episode 3 artistic aims are intimately in tune – Rochberg speaks ingredient of his expressive palette, but embraces it immense depth, scope and luminosity. an d Fi n a l e . of Varèse as “the last Romantic”, especially for his without reserve, showering the music with virtuosity, “ Transcendental” has everything to do with Each of the E p i s o d e s is contemplative, even Ar c a n a (itself, in part, an “hommage à Strawinsky”), ma s t e r y, and an intensely personal voice. “Diatonic” Rochberg’s vision of time, or rather, timelessness; no dreamlike in character; while the opening and closing “its totally released hysterical emotionalism always at though it is, the score contains myriad passing resonance is intended with the nineteenth century sections and the De v e l o p m e n t s are fast-paced, driven the breaking-into-chaos point”. harmonies and melodic collisions, frequently reaching American literary movement of the same name. These cries of despair teetering on the edge of chaos and By turns angry, stark and desolate, Black Sounds is surprising levels of dissonance through multiple seven variations are arranged in a sequence that feels collapse. Rochberg recalls the American poet Robert closely based on a 1964 composition, Ap o c a l y p t i c a , for suspensions or complex canonic intersections, that deceptively simple on the surface. The true “th e m e ” of Bl y : “Eat your grief before it eats you.” Yet, the second large wind ensemble, piano and no less than twelve would have been unimaginable prior to the twentieth the Var i a t i o n s is only revealed in the Fi n a l e , an homage Ep i s o d e contains hauntingly beautiful forest music, the percussion. There are few changes of content in this ce n t u r y. in canonic form to one of the composer’s most revered calls of four horns melting into the distance of time, adaptation for twelve wind and brass, piano/celesta, This is not the place to describe the controversy forbears. The work transcends, indeed rejects any recalling faint, just recoverable echoes of the lost era of and four percussion; though, intriguingly, the cadenzas unleashed by the early performances and recording of religious meaning; its true inner life remains hidden. the Chanson de Roland. The third Ep i s o d e also regards for a panoply of unpitched drums and tomtoms in the Qu a r t e t . Its detractors aside, the work struck a Whilst toying with ancient mysticisms, it is in the end time, now in the epoch of Einstein and Hawking: the Ap o c a l y p t i c a , have been rewritten as pitched passages chord with countless musicians, one of whom, enclosed in its own impenetrable mystery. “cosmic clock”. The music of the first E p i s o d e for timpani in Black Sounds. The emotional impact of conductor Vilem Sokol, suggested to Rochberg in penetrates even into the Fi n a l e , where a longbreathed the work remains shattering for these reduced forces. 1975 a version of the quartet’s slow movement for Notes by Christpher Lyndon-Gee cello solo (played here by Manuel Fischer-Dieskau) Lincoln Center commissioned Black Sounds for a seeks to hold on to the timeless world, braving the September 24, 1965 telecast, where it was first intrusion of bleak reality until the last. performed as a ballet by Anna Sokolow under the title Conductor’s Note “ ‘In Medias Res’ : ‘In the Midst of things’ that is how “The Act”, describing an act of murder. The televised I wanted the opening of the multi-sectioned Fifth event won the Prix Italia the same year. The score of I first met George Rochberg in January 1986, when I performance, sixteen years and two months after its Symphony to begin”, writes the composer in his soon Ap o c a l y p t i c a is preceded by these lines, still apt for its was (unsuccessfully!) auditioning for Assistant première – represented the fulfillment of a long-held to-be-published Memoirs. “As though it had already incarnation as Black Sounds, from Act III, scene 2 of Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. That wish of mine. The Saarbrücken orchestra had given begun somewhere out of hearing in a fury of violent Shakespeare’s King Lear: same week, Rochberg’s Fifth Symphony was receiving public performances of the Violin Concerto a few days emotions suddenly it surrounds you, it is present, at its Bl o w , winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! its world première by the orchestra, under Sir Georg earlier, but the Fifth was scheduled only for the studio. peak, and takes you into its world with its insistent You cataracts and hurricanes, spout Solti. I attended rehearsals and the première, coming We finished the “t a k e s” in record time, leaving calling that cuts through the tumult.” Till you have drenched our steeples,drowned the cocks! to know Rochberg already quite well, as a result of two-and-a-half hours free at the end. The orchestra “Golden Music!”, declared Edgard Varèse to You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires, which I arranged several concerts and lectures for his generously assented to repeat the work entire and Rochberg of the younger man’s Duo Concertante, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, visit to Australia later the same year. whole, as a performance, for the composer and his following its performance at a Festival in Canada in Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strangely, this towering work, the Fifth, was not wife, Gene Rochberg. Without doubt, this “concert” 1960. A few years later, the young composer found Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world, taken up by other conductors after Solti, and its for an audience of two was one of the most moving himself sitting with the revered master in the latter’s Crack Nature’s moulds, all germens split at once, recording in Saarbrücken in March 2002 – its second experiences of my life. downtown New York townhouse, longingly eyeing a That make ingrateful man! 8.559115 4 8.559115 5 characters, but often sounding an echo of the five-note pannetone he had brought, to which Varèse was The ecstatic Transcendental Var i a t i o n s for string string orchestra. The resulting Tr a n s c e n d e n t a l “tu r n ” of Mahler’s Ni n t h and of the final “Ewig” indifferent; music alone the consuming topic of orchestra is a work derived closely from Rochberg’s Var i a t i o n s are music thoroughly recomposed in terms movement of Das Lied von der Erde. conversation. Varèse was already ill, but in the time left Third String Quartet of 197 1-72 one of the watershed of registration and sonorities. Its textures are filled out Totally groundbreaking is the form of the work, to him, the two composers formed a bond whose works in American, indeed in western art music of our to impart a richness quite different in scope from the which is a continuous composition of 28 minutes, in mutual admiration has been immortalized in this “ time. The Qu a r t e t is the first work of Rochberg’s in intimate qualities of the original string quartet, seven major sections: Opening Statement, Episode I, homage to Edgard Var è s e ”, Black Sounds. Indeed, their which he no longer flirts with “tonality” as an essential stretching the musical vision heavenward, giving it Development I, Episode 2, Development 2, Episode 3 artistic aims are intimately in tune – Rochberg speaks ingredient of his expressive palette, but embraces it immense depth, scope and luminosity. an d Fi n a l e . of Varèse as “the last Romantic”, especially for his without reserve, showering the music with virtuosity, “ Transcendental” has everything to do with Each of the E p i s o d e s is contemplative, even Ar c a n a (itself, in part, an “hommage à Strawinsky”), ma s t e r y, and an intensely personal voice. “Diatonic” Rochberg’s vision of time, or rather, timelessness; no dreamlike in character; while the opening and closing “its totally released hysterical emotionalism always at though it is, the score contains myriad passing resonance is intended with the nineteenth century sections and the De v e l o p m e n t s are fast-paced, driven the breaking-into-chaos point”. harmonies and melodic collisions, frequently reaching American literary movement of the same name. These cries of despair teetering on the edge of chaos and By turns angry, stark and desolate, Black Sounds is surprising levels of dissonance through multiple seven variations are arranged in a sequence that feels collapse. Rochberg recalls the American poet Robert closely based on a 1964 composition, Ap o c a l y p t i c a , for suspensions or complex canonic intersections, that deceptively simple on the surface. The true “th e m e ” of Bl y : “Eat your grief before it eats you.” Yet, the second large wind ensemble, piano and no less than twelve would have been unimaginable prior to the twentieth the Var i a t i o n s is only revealed in the Fi n a l e , an homage Ep i s o d e contains hauntingly beautiful forest music, the percussion. There are few changes of content in this ce n t u r y. in canonic form to one of the composer’s most revered calls of four horns melting into the distance of time, adaptation for twelve wind and brass, piano/celesta, This is not the place to describe the controversy forbears. The work transcends, indeed rejects any recalling faint, just recoverable echoes of the lost era of and four percussion; though, intriguingly, the cadenzas unleashed by the early performances and recording of religious meaning; its true inner life remains hidden. the Chanson de Roland. The third Ep i s o d e also regards for a panoply of unpitched drums and tomtoms in the Qu a r t e t . Its detractors aside, the work struck a Whilst toying with ancient mysticisms, it is in the end time, now in the epoch of Einstein and Hawking: the Ap o c a l y p t i c a , have been rewritten as pitched passages chord with countless musicians, one of whom, enclosed in its own impenetrable mystery. “cosmic clock”. The music of the first E p i s o d e for timpani in Black Sounds. The emotional impact of conductor Vilem Sokol, suggested to Rochberg in penetrates even into the Fi n a l e , where a longbreathed the work remains shattering for these reduced forces. 1975 a version of the quartet’s slow movement for Notes by Christpher Lyndon-Gee cello solo (played here by Manuel Fischer-Dieskau) Lincoln Center commissioned Black Sounds for a seeks to hold on to the timeless world, braving the September 24, 1965 telecast, where it was first intrusion of bleak reality until the last. performed as a ballet by Anna Sokolow under the title Conductor’s Note “ ‘In Medias Res’ : ‘In the Midst of things’ that is how “The Act”, describing an act of murder. The televised I wanted the opening of the multi-sectioned Fifth event won the Prix Italia the same year. The score of I first met George Rochberg in January 1986, when I performance, sixteen years and two months after its Symphony to begin”, writes the composer in his soon Ap o c a l y p t i c a is preceded by these lines, still apt for its was (unsuccessfully!) auditioning for Assistant première – represented the fulfillment of a long-held to-be-published Memoirs. “As though it had already incarnation as Black Sounds, from Act III, scene 2 of Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. That wish of mine. The Saarbrücken orchestra had given begun somewhere out of hearing in a fury of violent Shakespeare’s King Lear: same week, Rochberg’s Fifth Symphony was receiving public performances of the Violin Concerto a few days emotions suddenly it surrounds you, it is present, at its Bl o w , winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! its world première by the orchestra, under Sir Georg earlier, but the Fifth was scheduled only for the studio. peak, and takes you into its world with its insistent You cataracts and hurricanes, spout Solti. I attended rehearsals and the première, coming We finished the “t a k e s” in record time, leaving calling that cuts through the tumult.” Till you have drenched our steeples,drowned the cocks! to know Rochberg already quite well, as a result of two-and-a-half hours free at the end. The orchestra “Golden Music!”, declared Edgard Varèse to You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires, which I arranged several concerts and lectures for his generously assented to repeat the work entire and Rochberg of the younger man’s Duo Concertante, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, visit to Australia later the same year. whole, as a performance, for the composer and his following its performance at a Festival in Canada in Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strangely, this towering work, the Fifth, was not wife, Gene Rochberg. Without doubt, this “concert” 1960. A few years later, the young composer found Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world, taken up by other conductors after Solti, and its for an audience of two was one of the most moving himself sitting with the revered master in the latter’s Crack Nature’s moulds, all germens split at once, recording in Saarbrücken in March 2002 – its second experiences of my life. downtown New York townhouse, longingly eyeing a That make ingrateful man! 8.559115 4 8.559115 5 Symphony Orchestra of Saarbrücken Radio, Germany no context and no hope of communication. His music other honours have accumulated in ever greater The Solemn Inauguration of Radio Sarrebruck, with the participation of the newly formed Orchestre liberates the contemporary musician fearlessly to draw profusion. In 1996, his manuscripts and papers were Symphonique took place on Sunday 17th March,1946. A programme of Berlioz,Saint-Saëns,and Debussy was upon, and develop in his own voice, the inheritance of acquired for the archives at the Paul Sacher played as this, like so many other ravaged towns of war-scarred Europe, struggled to reestablish normality of his artistic forbears without being derivative, in the Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. life, especially cultural life. Saarbrücken lies at the edge of the magnificent wine-growing and pâté-de-foie knowledge that there is a language, that the many-hued In the words of the Washington Pos t , “Ro c h b e r g districts of Alsace, not far from Louis XIV’s fortress city of Saarlouis, amidst a region contested for centuries. palette of the great masters has not been darkened presents the rare spectacle of a composer who has made At the close of the second world war, it found itself French. In 1956,its citizens voted in a referendum to rejoin forever by the cultural pathologies of the twentieth his peace with tradition while maintaining a strikingly Germany. Two miles from the present-day French-German border, they rejoice in their cosmopolitan mix. ce n t u r y. individual profile... he succeeds in transforming the Over the last 57 years,the symphony orchestra of Saarland Radio has become one of the most distinguished “The hope of contemporary music”, writes sublime concepts of traditional music into contemporary ensembles in Germany. Especially noteworthy were the thirteen years, beginning in 1971, of the music Rochberg, “lies in learning how to reconcile all manner la n g u a g e .” directorship of Hans Zender, a pioneering composer-conductor, whose annual Music in the Twentieth Century of opposites, contradictions, paradoxes; the past with the In 1983 John Edwards, manager of the Chicago Festival initiated commissions and first performances of works by Messiaen,Lachenmann,Zimmermann,Rihm, present, tonality with atonality. That is why, in my most Symphony Orchestra, sounded out Rochberg about Berio, Maderna, Nono and dozens of other contemporary figures. Consequently, this orchestra shows great recent music, I have tried to utilize these in combinations the possibility of writing a substantial work to mark the virtuosity and freedom of playing style in many idioms. Since 2000, their music director has been Günther which reassert the primal values of music.” city’s forthcoming sesquicentennial in 1986. An Herbig, who has brought to the orchestra equal finesse in the great Austro-German repertoire of earlier times. George Rochberg was born in Paterson, New anonymous patron had specifically indicated a Jersey on 5th July, 1918. An accomplished pianist who “Concerto for Brass and Orchestra”; Rochberg replied, worked his way through college playing in jazz bands in “When I write my new Symphony, I will not neglect the Christopher Lyndon-Gee New York City, he began formal studies of br a s s ! ” Christopher Lyndon-Gee was nominated for a GRAMMY in 1998 for Best Orchestral Performance for the composition in 1939 at the Mannes School of Music, Some months later, Rochberg was meeting with ground-breaking complete works of Igor Markevitch (Marco Polo releases), while, in 2001-2002, recordings for under Hans Weisse, George Szell and Leopold Georg Solti, who had already conducted his Vi o l i n Naxos of Arcana and other works by Varèse, with the Polish National Radio Orchestra won rave notices Mannes. He was seriously wounded during wartime Co n c e r t o and the symphonic poem Imago Mundi. The worldwide. Gramophone, Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, and Fanfare have all recognized his work, while se r vice in Europe, subsequently resuming his studies at co m p o s e r , hoping that he would be allowed a large Australian critics’ organizations named him Artist of the Year and Best Opera Conductor, the latter for his the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 194 5 orchestra, including fourth trumpet and extra conducting of the world première of Lar ry Sitsky’s The Golem at Sydney Opera House. with Rosario Scalero. From 195 1, he was Director of percussion, related the “Concerto for Brass” story. Also a widely performed composer,Lyndon-Gee was honoured as Composer Laureate of the Onassis Publications for the music publishing house Theodore Smiling broadly, Solti revealed, “that was me!”, and of Foundation,Athens,in 2001,has won the Adolf Spivakovsky Prize, the Sounds Australian Award (three times), Pr e s s e r , in 1960 becoming Chairman of the Music course readily agreed to a full-scale symphony. and two MacDowell Fellowships. He is currently working on major orchestral works including The Auschwitz Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In 197 9 Conventional assumptions about Rochberg’s work Poems and Socrates’ Death, the latter commissioned for première at Canterbury Cathedral, in his native he was designated Annenberg Professor of the are radically subverted by this monumental work. The England, in 2004. During 2003, his setting of an ancient Greek Ode under the title The Temple of Athena Humanities, retiring from the University in 198 3 . Fifth Symphony embodies the distillation par Pronaea was premièred in New York. Rochberg’s music has been honoured since his excellence of Rochberg’s concept of “hard” Lyndon-Gee studied under Arthur Hutchings and Rudolf Schwartz in Great Britain, Franco Ferrara and earliest substantial compositions, his Night Music Romanticism: expressive, yet never indulgent; Goffredo Petrassi in Italy, and Igor Markevitch at Monte Carlo. Hearing him conduct a student concert in Rome, receiving the George Gershwin Memorial Award in passionate, yet stringently argued. Its seamless Leonard Bernstein invited him to Tanglewood, where he met Bruno Maderna,becoming the latter’s assistant in 1953. Since then, Naumberg Recording Aw a r d s , integration of differing modes of expression is, indeed, Milan. Erich Leinsdorf and Maurice Abravanel were also influential on his work. He enjoyed a busy early career Guggenheim Fellowships, Honorary Doctorates, a no more or less varied in voice than one might as a pianist, specializing in contemporary repertoire, and over two hundred new works were written for him. Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, and encounter – or expect! – in any Mahler Symphony. The Today, his hectic freelance career includes regular visits to orchestras in Germany, Italy, England,The Fulbright Scholarship in 195 0 - 5 1 (the year in which he music is held together by core thematic material of Netherlands, Poland,Australia,New Zealand, Russia and several other countries. He serves also as Head of the Conducting School at New York’s Adelphi University, combining this with constant travel. met and befriended Luigi Dallapiccola), the ASCAP merely a few intervals, brilliantly manipulated to Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000; and countless engender musical motives of vastly differing 6 8.559115 3 8.559115 George Rochberg (b. 1918): George Rochberg (geb.1918) Symphony No. 5 ¥ Black Sounds ¥ Transcendental Variations Fünfte Sinfonie · Black Sounds · Transcendental Variations The key that will open George Rochberg’s music to expressivity of the strict twelve-tone environment. George Rochberg wurde am 5. Juli 1918 in Pat e r s o n Gegensatz zu dem, was man bis dahin von ihm the willing, the curious, but especially to the Having mastered the idiom, he was far ahead of his im US-Bundesstaat New Jersey geboren. Bereits gewöhnt war. Sie ist ein Destillat seiner âharten‘ “innocent” ear lies not in the conventional wisdom time in seeking to go beyond it. während seiner College-Zeit trat er als Pianist in Romantik: voller Expressivität, aber niemals als that declares him the first “post-modernist” for his The oft-repeated assertion that it was Jazzbands in New York auf, bevor er 1939 sein Selbstzweck, voller Leidenschaft, aber mit zwingender openness to a complex mix of musical languages, but predominantly personal tragedy that led Rochberg to Kompositionsstudium an der Mannes School of Music Logik. Die Musik wird von einem aus nur wenigen begann, wo Hans Weisse, George Szell und Leopold In t e r vallen bestehenden thematischen Ker n m a t e r i a l rather in seeking to enter the composer’s abandon dodecaphony and embrace tonality, is not Mannes seine Lehrer waren. Nach dem Zw e i t e n zusammengehalten – brillant manipuliert, um ex t r a o r d i n a r y understanding of the nature of time. entirely borne out by the facts. His evolution towards Weltkrieg setzte er sein Studium am Curtis Institute of musikalische Motive von unterschiedlichstem As long ago as 1963, Rochberg, in The New Image a multiplicity of simultaneous languages was already Music in Philadelphia bei Rosario Scalero fort. 195 1 Charakter zu erzeugen. Ganz und gar ungewöhnlich ist of Music, wrote that the successive revolutions of well in train from his earliest compositions. Rochberg erhielt er einen Direktorenposten beim Musikverlag auch die Gliederung dieses Werks – einer twelve-tone composition and of the post-war speaks of his use of twelve-tone techniques as Theodore Presser und 1960 wurde er Vorsitzender der durchkomponierten Komposition von 28 Minuten avant-garde had brought about a liberation that engendering a “hard” Romanticism – one has only to Musikfakultät der Universität Pennsylvania. 19 7 9 Länge – in sieben Hauptabteilungen: Introduktion, “permits sounds to create their own context”. This look at the slow movement of the Second Symphony, erfolgte seine Ernennung zum Annenberg Professor of Episode I, Durchführung I, Episode II, Durchführung liberation of sound from tonal harmonic functions, Rochberg’s “serial” work par excellence, to see that the Humanities, und diesen Lehrauftrag erfüllte er bis II, Episode III, Finale. Jede der Episoden ist von led to “the overthrow of a long-dominant temporal the tone row yields music that alternates between melt- zu seiner Emeritierung im Jahre 198 3 . kontemplativem, traumähnlichem Charakter, während st r u c t u r e ”; to a world in which conglomerates of pure ing, elegiac beauty and desperate explosions of Bereits seine ersten substanziellen Kom p o s i t i o n e n der Eröffnungs - und Schlussteil sowie die wurden mit Preisen ausgezeichnet. So erhielt er 195 3 Durchführungsabschnitte jeweils in schnellem Tem p o sound are able to interact in ways that are not anguish; ebullient self-confidence and profound für seine Night Music den George Gershwin Memorial komponiert sind, getrieben von Ver z w e i f l u n g s s c h r e i e n necessarily hidebound by structural considerations. tr a g e d y . Award; hinzu kamen u.a. Naumberg am Rande von Chaos und Zusammenbruch. Und doch “Subjective man,” writes Rochberg, “v i e w s George Rochberg’s relationship with the past is Schallplattenpreise, Guggenheim Fe l l o w s h i p s , enthält die zweite Episode eine Art Waldmusik von existence as change; himself and his history at the not one of nostalgia; it is one of intimate, living Ehrendoktorate, ein Fellowship an der Amerikanischen betörender Schönheit, in der der Ruf von vier Hörnern center of a process of becoming... Subjective man fa m i l i a r i t y . Indeed, he has said, in Reflections on the Akademie in Rom, ein Fulbright-Stipendium 1951 - 5 2 mit der Ferne der Zeit zu verschmelzen scheint, dem cannot transcend time; he is trapped in it. However, Renewal of Music, “History will not help us; but the sowie im Jahr 2000 der ASCAP Award für sein kaum wahrnehmbaren Echo einer verlorenen Epoche when man seizes on the present moment of existence as past, which is ever-present, can”. Le b e n s w e r k . des Roland-Liedes. Auch die dritte Episode beschäftigt the only ‘real’ time, he spatializes his existence; that is, Rochberg is never about regret, borrowing or 1983 wandte sich John Edwards, Manager des sich mit der Zeit, und zwar mit dem Zeitalter Einsteins he fills his present with objects that take on … a state of quotation (even if only quotation “in kind”). The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, an Rochberg mit dem und Hawkings: die âkosmische Uhr‘. Die Musik der pe r m a n e n c e .” Thus did the composer allow broader Universal Mind, which is there to be embraced by a Kompositionsauftrag für ein Werk zur 600-Jahrfeier ersten Episode dringt sogar bis ins Finale vor, in dem der Stadt im Jahre 1986; ein anonymer Mäzen, so ein weitatmiges Cellosolo sich an der zeitlosen Wel t means of expression to be added to his vocabulary, composer humble enough to deny ego and the flawed Edwards, habe sich ausdrücklich ein âKonzert für festzuklammern und das Eindringen der öden constantly enlarging it, making possible what he later search for “originality” at all costs, transcends Time Blechbläser und Orchester‘ erbeten. Rochbergs Wirklichkeit bis zuletzt abzuwehren scheint. came to call an “all-at-once world”. and Space. Denying individualism, seeing the creative Antwort: „Wenn ich meine neue Sinfonie schreibe, „âIn medias res‘: so wollte ich diese aus By 1959, Rochberg was lionized as America’s first artist as a representative of the endless procession of werde ich das Blech nicht vernachlässigen!“ Einige verschiedenen Teilen bestehende Fünfte Sinfonie and greatest Master of composition in a serial the human condition, the purveyor of our collective Monate später traf Rochberg mit Georg Solti beginnen lassen“, schreibt der Komponist in seinen in language. His 1955-56 Second Symphony, taken up me m o r y, allows the composer to gather the entirety of zusammen. Der Komponist, dem ein großes Orchester Vorbereitung befindlichen Memoiren. „Als ob alles and enthusiastically premièred by George Szell, experience into a single, integrated language. mit vierter Trompete und zusätzlichem Schlagwerk bereits begonnen hat – irgendwo außerhalb des seemed to lay out a path for him as one of the leaders At the heart of Rochberg’s music are an vorschwebte, erzählte dem Maestro von der Idee eines Hörbaren – in einem Wüten von heftigen Emotionen – of the American av a n t - g a r d e . And yet, not even three acceptance of the past as an integral ingredient of a âK onzerts für Blechbläser‘. „Die stammte von mir“, plötzlich umgibt es dich – ist es da und entführt dich mit years after its première, he was rethinking his rich present; an understanding that an art which entgegnete Solti, und natürlich war er mit einer groß seinen beharrlichen Rufen, die durch den Tu m u l t language, already dissatisfied with the limitations of insists on “originality” in its every utterance can have besetzten Sinfonie sofort einverstanden. hindurch schneiden, in seine Wel t . “ Rochbergs Fünfte Sinfonie steht in krassem Se l t s a m e r weise ist dieses Riesenwerk nach Solti 8.559115 2 8.559115 7 von keinem anderen Dirigenten aufgeführt worden. hämmre zur Scheibe die runde Wölbung der Wel t , Unsere Einspielung in Saarbrücken im Jahr 2000 (erst ze r s c h l a g ‘ die Formen der Natur, alle Keime ersticke, die zweite Aufführung, sechzehn Jahre und zwei die undankbar den Menschen machen! AMERICAN CLASSICS Monate nach der Premiere), bedeutete für mich die Transcendental Var i a t i o n s , ein ekstatisches Wer k Erfüllung eines lang gehegten Wunsches. Das für Streichorchester, ist eng mit Rochbergs Drittem Saarbrücker Orchester hatte einige Tage zuvor Streichquartett von 197 1-72 verwandt – einem der öffentliche Aufführungen von Rochbergs Vi o l i n k o n z e r t umwälzendsten Werke der amerikanischen Musik gegeben, aber die Fünfte Sinfonie war als reine unserer Zeit. Das Quartett ist das erste Werk, in dem Studioproduktion geplant. Wir spielten die âtakes‘ in Rochberg nicht länger mit der âTonalität‘ als Rekordzeit ein, sodass wir zweieinhalb Stunden eher essentiellem Bestandteil seiner Ausdruckspalette fertig waren als vorgesehen. Das Orchester erklärte flirtet, sondern sie vorbehaltlos umarmt, indem er die GEORGE sich bereit, das Werk noch einmal als Ganzes zu Musik mit Virtuosität und einer höchst persönlichen spielen, und zwar als eine Art Privataufführung für den Stimme tränkt. Obwohl es sich um eine âdiatonische‘ Komponisten und seine Frau Gene. Dieses âKon z e r t ‘ Komposition handelt, enthält die Partitur unzählige ROCHBERG für zwei Personen gehört zu den bewegendsten melodische Kollisionen, wobei oft genug Augenblicken meines Lebens. überraschende Dissonanzen durch multiple Vor h a l t e Black Sounds ist ein abwechselnd zorniges, ödes oder komplexe kanonische Schnittpunkte produziert und trostloses Werk, das einen engen Bezug zu den werden, die vor dem zwanzigsten Jahrhundert 1964 entstandenen A p o c a l y p t i c a für großes undenkbar gewesen wären. Bläserensemble, Klavier und zwölf Schlaginstrumente Der Dirigent Vilem Sokol schlug Rochberg 197 5 Symphony No. 5 aufweist. Es gibt nur wenige inhaltliche Änderungen in eine Bearbeitung des langsamen Satzes des Quartetts dieser Bearbeitung für zwölf Holz- und Blechbläser, für Streichorchester vor. Bei den so entstandenen Black Sounds Klavier/Celesta und zwölf Schlaginstrumente, obwohl Transcendental Variations handelt es sich um eine be z e i c h n e n d e r weise die Kadenzen für eine Batterie gründliche Neubearbeitung. Die Texturen sind auf eine Transcendental Variations von ungestimmten Trommeln und Tamtams in Weise ausgeweitet, die gegenüber den intimen A p o c a l y p t i c a für Black Sounds als notierte Klängen des ursprünglichen Quartetts eine opulente Paukenpassagen neu geschrieben wurden. B l a c k Klangfülle erzeugt und dem Werk großartige Tiefe und S o u n d s ist eine Auftragskomposition des Lincoln Leuchtkraft verleiht. Der Begriff âTranszendenz‘ ist für Center für eine Fernsehsendung vom 24. September Rochberg unlösbar verbunden mit seiner Auffassung 1965, in der das Stück zuerst als ein Ballett von Anna von Zeit, oder besser von Zeitlosigkeit. Die sieben Sokolow unter dem Titel The Act, der szenischen Variationen sind in einer auf den ersten Blick trügerisch Darstellung eines Mordes, aufgeführt wurde. Die simplen Weise angeordnet. Das eigentliche Partitur der Ap o c a l y p t i c a enthält als Einleitung die âT h e m a ‘ wird erst im Finale enthüllt. Die Var i a t i o n e n folgenden Zeilen aus Shakespeares König Lear, die transzendieren nicht nur jegliche religiöse Bedeutung, auch in Black Sounds ihre Gültigkeit bewahren: sie weisen sie vielmehr zurück. Das wahre Innenleben Saarbrcken Radio Blast, Winde, bis eure Wangen bersten! tobt! wütet! bleibt verborgen. Während das Werk mit antiken Symphony Orchestra Ihr Katarakte und Orkane, ergießt euch, Mystizismen spielt, bleibt es am Ende selbst ein bis ihr die Wetterhähne unserer Kirchtürme ertränkt habt! unergründliches Geheimnis. Christopher Lyndon-Gee Ihr schwefligen, gedankentötenden Feu e r , Boten der eichenspaltenden Blitzschläge, Christopher Lyndon-Gee versengt mein weißes Haupt! Und du, tosender Donner, Deutsche Fassung: Bernd Delfs

8.559115 8 9115RochbergtrayEC 4/30/03 8:44 AM Page 1

CMYK

Pl aying George Tim e : 61 : 0 3 ROCHBERG (b. 1918) AMERICAN CLASSICS

1 Symphony No. 5 (1984-85)* 28:47 George Rochbergs name enjoys a secure place in the canon of 20th 2 Black Sounds (196 5 ) 14 : 2 5 century American composers, yet his large-scale, most challenging works Transcendental Variations (1975) * 17: 4 6 remain little known. The power and sweep of Symphony No. 5 make a 3 I - Adagio sereno; molto espressivo e tranquillo 4:08 potent case for Rochberg as one of the 4 II - Andante con moto 1 : 16 c e n t u rys truly great symphonists, 5 III - Poco adagio 2 : 14 blending a mature twelve-tone 6 IV - Poco allegretto; grazioso e leggiero; amoroso 2:34 m a s t e ry with elegiac evocations that 7 V - Andantino grazioso; sempre leggiero 1:30 range across the span of human 8 VI - Moving gently 2 : 0 3 h i s t o ry and experience, while 9 VII - Molto adagio e tranquillo; sereno 4 : 01 Transcendental Va r i a t i o n s is one of the most searingly beautiful works Saarbrcken Radio Symphony Orchestra ever conceived for the intimate medium of the string orchestra. Christopher Lyndon-Gee DDD Booklet notes in English *World Premire Recordings Kommentar auf Deutsch A Co-Production with Saarlndischer Rundfunk www. Re c o r de d at the Halberg Broadcasting House, Saarlndischer Rundfunk, 8.559115 Saarbrcken, Germany on March 19- 2 1, 2002 (1); December 22, 2000 (2); naxos.com and March 22-23, 2002 (3-9) Publishers: (1-2); ECS Publishing, Boston (3-9) Recording Producer (1, 3-9): Markus Brndle Recording Producer (2): Thomas Raisig Sound Engineer: Erich Heigold Cover Ar t : George Rochberg by ᎯHelen Mirkil (Used courtesy of the artist) American flag, folk artist, 188 0 s .