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Curtis Macomber Fred Sherry AMERICAN CLASSICS Curtis Macomber is among the most versatile soloists/chamber musicians, equally at home in repertoire from Bach A pioneer and a visionary in the music world, the cellist Fred Sherry has introduced audiences on five continents to Babbitt. As a member of the New World String Quartet from 1982-93, he performed in virtually all the important and all fifty United States to the music of our time through his close association with such composers as Babbitt, concert series in the United States, as well as touring abroad. He is the violinist of Speculum Musicae and a Berio, Carter, Davidovsky, Foss, Knussen, Lieberson, Mackey, Takemitsu, Wuorinen and Zorn. He has been a founding member of the Apollo Trio, with a series of acclaimed recordings. He is a member of the chamber music member of The Group for Contemporary Music, Berio’s Juilliard Ensemble and the Galimir String Quartet, and a faculty of the Juilliard School, where he studied with Joseph Fuchs. He is also on the violin faculty of the Manhattan close collaborator with jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea. He was a founding member of Speculum Musicae School of Music, and has taught at the Tanglewood, Taos and Yellow Barn Music Festivals. and Tashi. Fred Sherry has been an active performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since the 1970s, an Artist Member since 1984 and was the Artistic Director from 1988 to 1992. He is a member of the cello Jacob and chamber music faculty of the Juilliard School and the cello faculty of the Mannes College of Music. In the vast Carol Zeavin scope of his recording career, Fred Sherry has been a soloist and “sideman” on hundreds of commercial and esoteric recordings. His long-standing collaboration with Robert Craft has produced recordings of Schoenberg’s Cello DRUCKMAN A native of Los Angeles, California, Carol Zeavin graduated cum laude from UCLA and served as concertmaster of Concerto and String Quartet Concerto and other major works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Webern. the UCLA Symphony under Mehli Mehta. During this time she also served as Principal Second of both the Young Musicians’ Foundation Debut Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas and of the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. Her interest in chamber music led her to string quartet residencies in Binghamton, Buffalo and Vermont, as well as Daniel Druckman quartet performances at the Grand Teton and White Mountain music festivals. Her arrival in New York in 1976 String Quartets heralded the founding of the Columbia String Quartet, which gave first performances of works by Charles Percussionist Daniel Druckman is active as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician and recording artist, Wuorinen, Nicolas Roussakis, Lukas Foss, Morton Feldman and Wayne Peterson, and the world première of Alban concertizing throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. He has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Berg’s programmatic Lyric Suite with voice. She has performed with Speculum Musicae since 1976, and has Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra and in recital in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and recorded chamber music for Columbia Records, New World Records, Nonesuch, CRI, Bridge Records and Koch Tokyo. He is currently associate principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic and is on the faculty of the Nos. 2 and 3 International. She gave her solo New York début recital in 1982. In her orchestral work Carol Zeavin has served as Juilliard School, where he serves as chairman of the percussion department and director of the percussion ensemble. principal second with the American Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, He is also a member of the New York New Music Ensemble and Speculum Musicae, and has made numerous guest American Ballet Theatre, and Paul Taylor Ballet. She currently serves as principal second of the New York appearances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Da Capo Chamber Players, The Group for Chamber Symphony, and Dance Theatre of Harlem, and was a member for twenty years of the Mostly Mozart Contemporary Music, the American Brass Quintet and Orpheus, among many others. Daniel Druckman has recorded Reflections on the Orchestra. In addition, since 1992, she has embraced a second career in Early Childhood Education and Early for the Columbia, Angel, DGG, CRI, Nonesuch, Bridge, Koch, Argo and New World labels. Intervention, has received two Masters degrees from Bank Street College and permanent certification from the State of New York. Formerly Head Teacher at the Barnard College Toddler Development Center, she is now working in Nature of Water the field of Special Education with young children at home and at school. Dark Wind Lois Martin

Lois Martin, a native of York, Pennsylvania, began her viola studies with Arthur Lewis at the Peabody Preparatory School. She completed her undergraduate work at the Eastman School of Music where she was a scholarship student of Francis Tursi. During this time, she was a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. She continued her graduate studies at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Lillian Fuchs. She is a founding member of the Atlantic String Quartet, and is also The Group for Principal Violist for the Stamford Symphony, Solisti New York, OK Mozart Festival, Concordia and String Fever. She is also a member of the Orchestra of St Luke’s, the Salon Chamber Players and the American Chamber Ensemble. She is on the faculty of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and has taught at Princeton University. Contemporary Music 8.559260 5 6 8.559260 559260 bk Druckman US 2/9/06 1:42 PM Page 2

Jacob Druckman (1928-1996) Druckman’s experimentalism was at its height. The work is repeated note sequence (D again) and so the variation small payment towards a very large debt. There were readily discerned, (concern with folding and unfolding String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 • Reflections on the Nature of Water • Dark Wind cast in one continuous movement, and is formally quite process proper starts. The variations come in continuous primarily two composers, Debussy and Stravinsky, whose intervallic elements, timbre, repeated note patterns etc.), but loosely constructed, although there are elements of variation groups of three, the first being followed by two marcia- music affected me so profoundly during my tender the leanness of texture and terseness of utterance suggest a Jacob Druckman was born in Philadelphia on 26th June performer and instrument theatrically as well as musically, form in the treatment of the opening intervallic and metrical ritornelli (themselves divided by a scherzo) and which formative years that I had no choice but to become a new sense of urgency. The piece is a brief essay (again in 1928, the son of a manufacturer with a strong amateur in conjunction or competition with a pre-recorded tape. elements. Much greater is the emphasis on contrasts in the introduce a strongly rhythmical dimension to the music, composer. It is to Debussy that I doff my hat with these quasi-variation form) on the material heard at the beginning, musical talent. He began playing the piano at the age of Despite the wildness of some of these pieces, he continued relationship between pitch and timbre, mood and dynamic, giving it further dramatic impetus and providing a reflections of his magical preludes.” and is a fitting summation of all that is finest and most three, and at the age of ten came to the notice of Louis to reach backwards to earlier musical forms, and began to achieved through the use of devices such as ricochet legno springboard for new variations. In the first scherzo, the Druckman’s music had been moving into a more distinctive in Druckman’s mature style. Gesensway, a leading musical figure in Philadelphia in his favour direct musical quotation. (allowing the back of the bow to bounce off the strings repeated note idea returns, but with variation of pitch, established, romantic pattern in his final decade and Jacob Druckman died in May 1996. Shortly before he day and member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who taught Druckman was well into his forties before he felt ready whilst altering the pitch on the fingerboard), sordini (mutes) timbre and dynamic, and intervals being linked and closed Reflections is a clear instance of this trend. Dark Wind for died, he was able to be present at some of the recording him the violin and composition while he was in his early to face the ultimate challenge of the full symphony ponticello, and exaggerated ponticello, where the bow by glissandi and portamenti. Sudden lush chords herald the violin and cello (1994) was one of his last works, and is sessions for this disc, and made known his delight and teens. His early works failed to make an impact and at the orchestra, but his first truly large-scale work Windows presses against the mute almost totally obscuring the pitch. return of the marcia which closes the first movement. The both remarkably concentrated and concise throughout its six enthusiasm with the results. age of 21 he decided to abandon music altogether, but was (1972) immediately won him the Pulitzer Prize. The title At times the player is required to choke the note on the second movement (Variations 4, 5 and 6) sees dramatic minute span. Elements from the earlier quartets may be Bret Johnson saved from this course by Aaron Copland who, having seen aptly summarises one of the major facets of that piece and string by dragging the bow too slowly to produce tension increasing with earlier elements receiving more his work, invited him to Tanglewood as a composition of the series of highly successful and impressive orchestral identifiable pitch. Although the thematic material receives concentrated and simultaneous development. In the sixth student. He studied at the Juilliard School in New York with works which followed it, namely the perception of image quite liberal treatment, there is much dialogue and imitation variation there is a fragment of what may be a romantic Bernard Wagenaar, Vincent Persichetti and Peter Mennin, and the contrast between light and dark, time and space. between the voices, evident from the very opening G on the quotation. The third return of the marcia at the beginning of and at the Ecole Normale de Musique with Tony Aubin. Other titles take up these themes: Chiaroscuro (1977), first violin, taken up in echo by the other instruments. the third movement is also the most clearly defined Druckman produced a substantial list of works, including Aureole (1979), Prism (1980) and Mirage (1976), all of Sometimes the parts follow one another, at other times they rhythmically, and from then on the tempi gradually become orchestral, chamber, vocal and electronic music. them huge landscapes in which Druckman filters and sifts go in the opposite direction and end up in open conflict. If opaque and distorted, especially in the succeeding seventh Organisations that commissioned his music included Radio sounds and images in an almost constellar fashion. Many of structure and form are elastic, metrical patterns are very variation. There is also a marked decline in tension as the France, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York these works, too, contain quotations from earlier music, precise and the aleatoric element is surprisingly small, and mood quietens in the final two variations and the music Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore especially from composers of the Italian baroque like usually only affords the players limited freedom within returns to its little bubble of a sustained D. The quartet ends Symphony, the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Cavalli, and from Cherubini (Druckman was fascinated by prescribed intervals or parameters. As the work progresses, with the bursting of this bubble in a shower of semiquavers. Quartet and IRCAM. Druckman was Professor of the Medea story and it is likely that had he lived longer he the mood becomes more intense as ideas briefly Reflections on the Nature of Water (1986) was The Group for Contemporary Music Composition at Yale University, and also taught at Juilliard, would have completed his Medea opera). As the 1980s encountered earlier return almost falling over one another to commissioned by the marimba player William Moersch Bard College, Tanglewood and Aspen. He served for four progressed, he began to adopt a more linear and be heard. The piece ends calmly, as it began, on a single and first heard at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. In 1985 The Group for Contemporary Music was awarded a citation from the American Academy and Institute of years as composer-in-residence at the New York contrapuntal idiom of composition which, while not exactly note. in November of that year. It is, in essence, a series of études Arts and Letters as follows: Philharmonic and as Artistic Director of the Horizons bringing his music through the full circle, marked an The Third Quartet (1981) was a commission from the and one is immediately struck by the oriental, even Festival. assimilation of those elements of earlier musical form Fromm Music Foundation for the Concord Quartet. It is, Japanese, mood so often associated with the instrument. “The Group for Contemporary Music, founded in 1962 by Harvey Sollberger and Charles Druckman’s early mature pieces from the 1950s (which he had hitherto been inclined to quote directly) into altogether, a much more classical affair in structural terms. The music perfectly captures the marimba’s reflective Wuorinen...changed the musical climate by redefining the standards of performance of knowing, include a Violin Concerto (1956) and two ballets. His first his own style of writing. This need for compactness partly As the composer comments in the score; “There are two character, and is overlaid with a shimmering tonal texture. demanding contemporary composition. It was the first collection of musicians joined in ensemble major success was with Four Madrigals (1958), for a derived from a number of commissions for short occasional insistent, inexorable subjects running through the entire Each of the six movements reflects a different physical to present new music exclusively and appropriately, with the necessary preparation, in time and cappella chorus, in which he was drawn to texts by the pieces like Summer Lightning (1991) and Seraphic Games work. The first, presented simply at the opening, moves property of water, and Druckman uses his favoured understanding. Today its ideals, and its personnel have spawned a population of such groups across English metaphysical poets including Donne’s “Death, be (1992). One of his last works, Counterpoise (1994), a song- through violent and complex transformations in the intervals, the second and augmented fourth or tritone, the country...wherever the music of our time has its rightful place.” not proud”. This was soon followed by Antiphonies I, II and cycle written for Dawn Upshaw and the Philadelphia variations and recedes to a shadowy structural skeleton in studiously avoiding consonant intervals such as thirds and III (1963), again for chorus, on texts by Gerard Manley Orchestra, is almost post-romantic in its lyrical outpouring the two scherzi. The second, that of the marcia-ritornelli, fifths. Rapid repeated note patterns and figurations appear, For four decades the Group has been central to the American new music scene, and for more than a generation has Hopkins. Druckman’s music uses renaissance polyphony, of texts by Emily Dickinson and Guillaume Apollinaire. remains almost untouched, obstinately retaining its especially in the second and last movements. The trained or introduced a large number of distinguished musicians. The Group’s primary aim is to present a broad but in a contemporary and experimental context. He was Druckman’s chamber music spans almost his entire character”. The work opens on a single note (D) and meditative third movement (marked Tranquil) could almost spectrum of the highest compositional achievements of our time, from the classic works of our century to emerging already interested in new spatial possibilities in vocal career, beginning with one of his earliest pieces, the String gradually unfolds in a sort of wedge pattern, the intervals be a Japanese woodprint. The fourth (marked Gently new talents, never bowing to fashions of the moment, but always supporting excellence in composition and writing and the idea of “cross-fading” so that sounds float Quartet No. 1 of 1948. The Second Quartet dates from steadily widening, culminating in a short tremolo interlude. swelling) is the most complex rhythmically, with irregular, performance. and flash, antiphonally, across the musical spectrum. By the 1966, and was commissioned for the Juilliard String Quartet Dramatic gesture soon appears in the form of almost calypso-like dance patterns between the two hands. mid-1980s he had begun his involvement with electronic by Lado, a philanthropic musical organization. It belongs to demisemiquaver runs, and ostinati figurations which imitate The ferocious last movement is a sort of joust. The music, and a series of works entitled Animus use the the same period as the early Animus pieces, when and affirm intervallic elements. Soon the viola takes up a composer writes: “Reflections on the Nature of Water is a 8.559260 2 3 8.559260 4 8.559260 559260 bk Druckman US 2/9/06 1:42 PM Page 2

1998 & String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 AMERICAN CLASSICS String Quartet No. 3 (1981)* 27:11 DRUCKMAN: Although he is best known for his

1 I. Variations 1-3; Marcia-ritornello;

2006 Naxos Rights International Ltd. • Made in USA Scherzo I; Marcia-ritornello 11:37 dramatic orchestral works, Jacob 2 II. Variations 4-6 6:04 Druckman also composed a sizeable body 3 III. Marcia ritornello; Scherzo II; Variations 7-9 9:30 of chamber music. The Second String Reflections on the Nature of Water (1986)** 15:17 Quartet was written during his most 4 I. Crystalline 3:25 experimental phase, and calls upon its 5 II. Fleet 1:41 6 performers to utilise a host of unorthodox

III. Tranquil 2:47 String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 7 IV. Gently swelling 2:06 techniques, whereas the Third Quartet of 8 V. Profound 3:13 fifteen years later is a much more 9 VI. Relentless 2:04 classical affair. Reflections on the Nature 0 Dark Wind (1994)† 5:46 of Water for solo marimba, played on this ! String Quartet No. 2 (1966)* 18:26 recording by Druckman’s son Dan, is a The Group for Contemporary Music series of études in homage to Debussy’s

String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 Curtis Macomber, Violin * † • Carol Zeavin, Violin * piano preludes. Dark Wind, one of Lois Martin, Viola * • Fred Sherry, Cello * † Druckman’s last works before his death Daniel Druckman, Marimba ** in 1996, is remarkably concentrated and This recording was made possible by the generous support of the Aaron Copland Foundation, the Mary Flagler Cary concise, and is a fitting summation of all Charitable Trust and the Evelyn Sharp Foundation. that is finest in his mature style. First issued on Koch International Classics in 1998. DDD Recorded from 31st March to 2nd April 1996 (tracks 1-3, 10 and 11), and on 22nd September 1996 (tracks 4-9) Booklet notes in English in the Recital Hall, Music Division, SUNY, Purchase, NY. DRUCKMAN: Produced and engineered by Judith Sherman

Engineering and editing assistance: Jeanne Velonis www.naxos.com 8.559260 8.559260 Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. (ASCAP) Booklet notes: Bret Johnson Executive Producer: Howard Stokar Cover photograph of Jacob Druckman by Vincent Oneppo American flag, folk artist, 1880s. NAXOS