559129 bk Rochberg US 12/02/2004 10:31am Page 8
MERICAN LASSICS Also available in this series: A C GEORGE ROCHBERG
Violin Concerto (Restored Original Version)
Peter Sheppard Skærved Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra 8.559115 Christopher Lyndon-Gee 8.559129 8 559129 bk Rochberg US 12/02/2004 10:31am Page 2
George Rochberg (b. 1918): Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1974) George World Première Recording of the restored Original Version (2001) ROCHBERG George Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey on 5th temporal structure”; to a world in which conglomerates of July, 1918. An accomplished pianist who worked his way pure sound are able to interact in ways that are not (b. 1918) through college playing in jazz bands in New York City, he necessarily hidebound by structural considerations. began formal studies of composition in 1939 at the Mannes “Subjective man,” writes Rochberg, “views existence Violin Concerto School of Music under Hans Weisse, George Szell and as change; himself and his history at the center of a process Leopold Mannes. He was seriously wounded during of becoming.. Subjective man cannot transcend time; he is (1974 rev. 2001 by Christopher Lyndon-Gee wartime service in Europe, subsequently resuming his trapped in it. However, when man seizes on the present studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in moment of existence as the only ‘real’ time, he spatializes in collaboration with the Composer) 1945 with Rosario Scalero. From 1951 he was Director of his existence; that is, he fills his present with objects that Publications for the music publishing house Theodore take on … a state of permanence.” Thus did the composer Presser, in 1960 becoming Chairman of the Music allow broader means of expression to be added to his Part One: Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1979 he vocabulary, constantly enlarging it, making possible what was designated Annenberg Professor of the Humanities, he later came to call an “all-at once world”. 1 Introduction: Allegro, ma un poco agitato e rubato molto 6:53 retiring from the University in 1983. By 1959, Rochberg was lionized as America’s first Rochberg’s music has been honoured since his earliest and greatest master of composition in a serial language. His 2 Intermezzo A: Moderato - Allegro assai - Tempo rigoroso - Precipitoso 8:07 substantial compositions, his Night Music receiving the 1955-56 Second Symphony, taken up and enthusiastically George Gershwin Memorial Award in 1953. Since then, given its première by George Szell, seemed to lay out a 3 (attacca) Fantasia: Adagio 7:39 Naumberg Recording Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, path for him as one of the leaders of the American avant- Honorary Doctorates, a Fellowship at the American garde, and yet, not even three years after its première, he Part Two: Academy in Rome, and Fulbright Scholarship in 1950-51 was rethinking his language, already dissatisfied with the (the year in which he met and befriended Luigi limitations of expressivity of the strict twelve-tone 4 Intermezzo B: Andante teneramente, calmato - Scherzoso - Adagio - Dallapiccola), the ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award environment. Having mastered the idiom, he was far ahead in 2000, and countless other honours have accumulated in of his time in seeking to go beyond it. Alla marcia, feroce, wild - Adagio, a piacere - Andante teneramente 18:35 ever greater profusion. In 1996 his manuscripts and papers The oft-repeated assertion that it was predominantly were acquired for the archives at the Paul Sacher personal tragedy that led Rochberg to abandon 5 Epilogue: Quasi mesto, sostenuto - Allegro, ma un poco agitato e rubato - Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. dodecaphony and embrace tonality, is not entirely borne The key that will open George Rochberg’s music to out by the facts. His evolution towards a multiplicity of Allegro moderato - Poco adagio, sostenuto - Adagio molto e sereno 10:26 the willing, the curious, but especially to the “innocent” simultaneous languages was already well in train from his ear, lies not in the conventional wisdom that declares him earliest compositions. Rochberg speaks of his use of the first “post modernist” for his openness to a complex twelve-tone techniques as engendering a “hard” mix of musical languages, but rather in seeking to enter the Romanticism (kin, perhaps, to the works of Alban Berg) - composer’s extraordinary understanding of the nature of one has only to look at the slow movement of the Second time. Symphony, Rochberg’s “serial” work par excellence, to see As long ago as 1963, Rochberg, in The New Image of that the tone row yields music that alternates between Music, wrote that the successive revolutions of twelve-tone melting, elegiac beauty and desperate explosions of composition and of the post-war avant-garde had brought anguish, ebullient self-confidence and profound tragedy. about a liberation that “permits sounds to create their own George Rochberg’s relationship with the past is thus not context”. This liberation of sound from tonal harmonic one of nostalgia: it is one of intimate, living familiarity. functions, led to “the overthrow of a long-dominant Indeed, he has said, in Reflections on the Renewal of
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Christopher Lyndon-Gee Music, “History will not help us; but the past, which is taxing, both for the violinist and for the audience”. ever-present, can”. One recalls, too, William Faulkner’s Consequently, the composer’s manuscript reads like a Christopher Lyndon-Gee was nominated for a GRAMMY in 1998 for “Best Orchestral Performance” for the dictum : “the past - it is not even past!” litany of frustration and fatigue; the score ultimately signed ground-breaking complete works of Igor Markevitch (Marco Polo 8.223653, 8.223666, 8.223724, 8.223882, Rochberg is never about regret, borrowing or as a “final” version in June 1976, carries no less than seven 8.225054, 8.225076, 8.225120); and again in 2003 for the world première recording of George Rochberg’s quotation (even if only quotation “in kind”). The Universal corrected and crossed-out dates of completion. Nineteen Symphony No. 5 on Naxos American Classics. In 2001-2002, recordings for Naxos of Arcana and other works by Mind, which is there to be embraced by a composer pages of score, in all, were deleted, not to speak of Varèse (Naxos 8.554820), with the Polish National Radio Orchestra won rave notices worldwide, such as humble enough to deny ego and the flawed search for adjustments (simplifications) of quadruple stops, rewriting “musically, Christopher Lyndon-Gee blows Boulez away … extraordinarily communicative musicianship” from “originality” at all costs, transcends Time and Space. of some solo material into the orchestra, and so on. New York’s Classics Today, and “race out to buy the astounding Lyndon-Gee version … able to make these Denying individualism, seeing the creative artist as a I had been dimly aware that the work had undergone elements cohere with a strength and conviction that challenges the very best” from Répertoire, Paris. The representative of the endless procession of the human some changes at Stern’s instigation, but it was only when Gramophone, Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, and Fanfare have all recognized his work; while Australian critics’ condition, the purveyor of our collective memory, allows the Naxos project got under way and I began to prepare in organisations named him “Artist of the Year” and “Best Opera Conductor”, the latter for his conducting of the world the composer to gather the entirety of experience into a earnest that the dimensions of the work’s dismemberment première of Larry Sitsky’s The Golem at Sydney Opera House. single, integrated language. “The hope of contemporary became apparent. Late in 2000, Rochberg’s former Also a widely performed composer, Lyndon-Gee was honoured as Composer Laureate of the Onassis music”, writes Rochberg, “lies in learning how to reconcile composition student, the composer Stephen Jaffe, told me Foundation, Athens, in 2001; has won the Adolf Spivakovsky Prize; the ‘Sounds Australian’ Award (three times); all manner of opposites, contradictions, paradoxes; the past how anguished George had been at the time of the early and two MacDowell Fellowships. He is currently working on major orchestral works including The Auschwitz with the present, tonality with atonality. That is why, in my performances of the Violin Concerto. Armed with the Poems and Socrates’ Death, the latter commissioned for première at Canterbury Cathedral, in his native England, in most recent music, I have tried to utilize these in determination that this gave me, I proposed a possible 2004. During 2003, his setting of an ancient Greek Ode under the title The Temple of Athena Pronaea was premièred combinations which reassert the primal values of music.” restoration of the “original version” of the score. Rochberg in New York. In the same week, On the Theory of Cosmic Strings received its première by Peter Sheppard Skærved In the words of the Washington Post, reacted as if a long-lost friend had turned up from prisoner- at the Odense Festival, Denmark. For 2004, Lyndon-Gee has co-ordinated eight composers (including himself!) to of-war camp, a mixture of caution with intense excitement, set work of the great American poets William Meredith and Richard Harteis in honour of the former’s 85th birthday, “Rochberg presents the rare spectacle of a composer who hardly daring to believe the possibility, with a rushing back for a “Songbook” recital that will tour worldwide in more than 22 performances. has made his peace with tradition while maintaining a of love for something believed lost. Lyndon-Gee studied under Arthur Hutchings and Rudolf Schwartz in Great Britain, Franco Ferrara and strikingly individual profile …… he succeeds in To my astonishment, lengthy investigations revealed Goffredo Petrassi in Italy, and Igor Markevitch at Monte Carlo. Hearing him conduct a student concert in Rome, transforming the sublime concepts of traditional music into that merely a single copy of the complete score survives. Leonard Bernstein invited him to Tanglewood, where he met Bruno Maderna, becoming the latter’s assistant in contemporary language.” Rochberg had long since given his entire archive to public Milan. Erich Leinsdorf and Maurice Abravanel were also influential on his work. He enjoyed a busy early career as institutions, and latterly, to the Paul Sacher Foundation in pianist, specializing in contemporary repertoire, with over two hundred new works written for him. Today, his hectic George Rochberg’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Basel. I hastily copied the missing segments into pencil freelance career includes regular visits to orchestras in Germany, Italy, England, The Netherlands, Poland, Australia, has been one of his most frequently heard and most short score over a couple of days, and promptly mailed New Zealand, Sweden, Russia and several other countries; he serves also as Head of the Conducting School at New enthusiastically received works, being played 47 times by these to Rochberg. His response was immediate and York’s Adelphi University, combining this with constant travel. Isaac Stern, who instigated its commission, between 1975 unequivocal : “Put it all back!” As I commenced this task, and 1977. Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony beyond merely restoring cuts I recognised that some of the Orchestra in memory of Donald Steinfirst, esteemed music changes were indeed “improvements”, the kind of minor critic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it was also recorded adjustments almost every composer makes after a first set by Stern and that orchestra under André Previn in 1977. of performances (most famously Mahler, to his publisher’s The seventh of that long run of performances took place at and engraver’s dismay). Therefore I consulted closely with Carnegie Hall on 14th April, 1975, to a sold-out audience, George Rochberg at every stage, to arrive at a conflated many of whom had formed a queue around the block as far score that represents his final wishes. By January 2002 I as 56th Street, seeking last-minute tickets. Puzzlingly, it was able to begin to produce orchestral materials, that was following this enormously successful performance that would be used at the triumphant public première of the Isaac Stern began to request changes that resulted restored score, with the composer present, at the eventually in cuts totalling some fourteen minutes. The Kongresshalle, Saarbrücken, on March 17th, 2002. At this influential violinist felt that the work was “too long and stage, too, close collaboration with Peter Sheppard
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Skærved was both inspiring and utterly invaluable. too, for the gorgeous circling and rising triplet figure with Peter Sheppard Skærved Nothing is impossible for this marvellous musician, who which the soloist will bring some sense of resolution to this seeks out the composer’s vision, comprehends it, and will mammoth work. The violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved has appeared as a concerto and recital soloist at major musical centres spare no amount of perspiration to hear it realised. This Concerto is in its entirety more true to the concept throughout the world, including the Far and Middle East, Europe and the United States. In Britain he has performed The Concerto for Violin is perhaps the perfect of this tortured form than almost any work in the repertoire; and broadcast at all the major venues and Festivals, and is the dedicatee of over 150 new works, ranging from pieces expression of Rochberg’s dialectic between a twelve-tone never a display piece, the soloist can be compared to the by established British composers such as Nigel Clarke, David Matthews and Michael Finnissy, long creative “hard” Romanticism and an elegiac, lyrical, tonal manner : lone voice of humanity pitting itself against the cosmos, relationships with international figures such as Hans Werner Henze, George Rochberg, William Bolcom, John the whole expressive, yet never indulgent; passionate, yet which is uncaring because unaware, therefore neither bad McCabe and Dmitri Smirnov, to collaborations with the front-line of the European avant-garde. In partnership with stringently argued. In the old Stern recording, the first and nor good, merely neutral. The violinist alternately leads the brilliant American pianist Aaron Shorr, he has toured worldwide, playing an eclectic and exploratory repertoire fifth movements open in the same way, with the soloist’s and pleads, yells his anguish and anger, subdues the mass that ranges from the cyclic performance of no fewer than seventy works by Beethoven in one series at St Johns overarching, anguished cry to attention. The restored of instruments, whips them up into a fury again. The Smith Square, London, to becoming the first foreign musician ever to tour a programme of new Turkish repertoire in opening to the fifth movement postpones this altercation, beautiful ending is one of resignation and quiet; no-one has Turkey, in autumn 2003. He has made over thirty critically acclaimed CDs, ranging from groundbreaking recordings making of it a Brucknerian “reversed recapitulation” that “won”, but something ineffable has been revealed. of Telemann and Michael Haydn, through the complete works for piano and violin by Beethoven, to numerous discs grows out of tutti material that has only been heard once of works specially written for him. His recording of the complete Henze solo works was a BBC Music Magazine before, some forty minutes earlier, and the way is prepared, Christopher Lyndon-Gee Disc of the Month, and his recording of solo Rawsthorne and McCabe works was nominated for a Gramophone Award in 2002. He is the leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, with whom he has recently recorded the complete quartets of Sir Michael Tippett, Roberto Gerhard and Haflidi Hallgrimsson, Harrison Birtwistle (in collaboration with the composer), and Michael Finnissy, this last CD of the month for Classic CD magazine, and Critic’s Choice for Violinist’s note on the Concerto Gramophone magazine. Peter Sheppard Skærved is a Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Excellence in 1989, and made an Associate in 1995. He has given I first heard Rochberg’s Violin Concerto when I was a ten- intensity that his music demands. He will hold an master-classes and lectures all over the world and has recently been appointed a year-old, in the classic Stern recording. From the first anacrusis in the air between finger and thumb, as you play, visiting professor at the Xing-Jiang Conservatoire in northern China. He has a particularly strong relationship with I outburst from Stern’s fiddle, the ‘great barbaric yawp’ daring you to be the first to break the line or betray an Solisti di Zagreb and following many critically acclaimed concerts with them round the Balkans was named their which begins the concerto, I was transfixed, and terrified. emotion. For Rochberg, just as for Bartók, Beethoven or principal guest director in 2003. Peter Sheppard Skærved plays the 1699 ‘Adelina Crespi’ Stradivari. It suddenly dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea Frank Martin, the tiniest and largest gestures bear the same what went on in the world of music, the world beyond my fundamental imprimatur, just as the signature of a school, beyond the suburbs in which I was growing up. beautiful rugged coastline is fundamentally constant, seen Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra Until I heard the Rochberg Concerto, I never realised that from whatever altitude. the violin could be so aggressive, sexual, rhapsodic, It was a great relief to receive the reconstituted The Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra was established in 1946, at a time when every attempt was being made pleading, bullying, warlike, sentimental, or so damn concerto from Christopher Lyndon-Gee. Instead of a to restore normality to life disturbed by the ravages of war. Saarbrücken lies at the edge of the magnificent wine- frightening. This was my introduction to the music of my series of colourful tableaux, a sweep of inevitable growing and pâté-de-foie districts of Alsace, not far from Louis XIV’s fortress city of Saarlouis, amidst a region time, my first clue that there was a real world out there, development was revealed, not unlike Beethoven’s Op. contested for centuries. At the close of the second world war, it found itself French. In 1956, its citizens voted in a beyond the leafy suburbs where I was growing up. 131 Quartet, Sibelius’ Voces Intimæ or indeed, George’s referendum to rejoin Germany. Two miles from the present-day French-German border, they rejoice in their I was aware even then, however, that there was some own Third Quartet. It suddenly made sense. Along with cosmopolitan mix. Over the last 57 years, the symphony orchestra of Saarland Radio has become one of the most kind of problem with the work as I heard it. Whilst I could this restoration of structural unity, came out a coherence distinguished ensembles in Germany. Especially noteworthy were the thirteen years, beginning in 1971, of the music call to mind any of the dynamic coups de théâtre, timbres that had eluded me in the past, the sense of prolepsis, a directorship of Hans Zender, a pioneering composer-conductor, whose annual Music in the Twentieth Century and lush melody of the concerto, I simply could not recall natural ebb and flow to the drama. This lent ease to Festival, initiated commissions and first performances of works by Messiaen, Lachenmann, Zimmerman, Rihm, the order things arrived. My puzzlement increased learning this giant, rendering even the most fearsome Berio, Maderna, Nono and dozens of other contemporary figures. Consequently this orchestra shows great virtuosity studying Rochberg’s music, and later through meeting and precipices approachable, even inviting, and revealing to and freedom of playing style in many idioms. Since 2000 their music director has been Günther Herbig, who has working with him. George will sing every note of his me the intimacy that is at the heart of this monumental brought to the orchestra equal finesse in the great Austro-German repertoire of earlier times. works, illustrated with bird-like hand-waving, in order to work. ensure that he really gets the shapes, the drama and Peter Sheppard Skaerved
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Skærved was both inspiring and utterly invaluable. too, for the gorgeous circling and rising triplet figure with Peter Sheppard Skærved Nothing is impossible for this marvellous musician, who which the soloist will bring some sense of resolution to this seeks out the composer’s vision, comprehends it, and will mammoth work. The violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved has appeared as a concerto and recital soloist at major musical centres spare no amount of perspiration to hear it realised. This Concerto is in its entirety more true to the concept throughout the world, including the Far and Middle East, Europe and the United States. In Britain he has performed The Concerto for Violin is perhaps the perfect of this tortured form than almost any work in the repertoire; and broadcast at all the major venues and Festivals, and is the dedicatee of over 150 new works, ranging from pieces expression of Rochberg’s dialectic between a twelve-tone never a display piece, the soloist can be compared to the by established British composers such as Nigel Clarke, David Matthews and Michael Finnissy, long creative “hard” Romanticism and an elegiac, lyrical, tonal manner : lone voice of humanity pitting itself against the cosmos, relationships with international figures such as Hans Werner Henze, George Rochberg, William Bolcom, John the whole expressive, yet never indulgent; passionate, yet which is uncaring because unaware, therefore neither bad McCabe and Dmitri Smirnov, to collaborations with the front-line of the European avant-garde. In partnership with stringently argued. In the old Stern recording, the first and nor good, merely neutral. The violinist alternately leads the brilliant American pianist Aaron Shorr, he has toured worldwide, playing an eclectic and exploratory repertoire fifth movements open in the same way, with the soloist’s and pleads, yells his anguish and anger, subdues the mass that ranges from the cyclic performance of no fewer than seventy works by Beethoven in one series at St Johns overarching, anguished cry to attention. The restored of instruments, whips them up into a fury again. The Smith Square, London, to becoming the first foreign musician ever to tour a programme of new Turkish repertoire in opening to the fifth movement postpones this altercation, beautiful ending is one of resignation and quiet; no-one has Turkey, in autumn 2003. He has made over thirty critically acclaimed CDs, ranging from groundbreaking recordings making of it a Brucknerian “reversed recapitulation” that “won”, but something ineffable has been revealed. of Telemann and Michael Haydn, through the complete works for piano and violin by Beethoven, to numerous discs grows out of tutti material that has only been heard once of works specially written for him. His recording of the complete Henze solo works was a BBC Music Magazine before, some forty minutes earlier, and the way is prepared, Christopher Lyndon-Gee Disc of the Month, and his recording of solo Rawsthorne and McCabe works was nominated for a Gramophone Award in 2002. He is the leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, with whom he has recently recorded the complete quartets of Sir Michael Tippett, Roberto Gerhard and Haflidi Hallgrimsson, Harrison Birtwistle (in collaboration with the composer), and Michael Finnissy, this last CD of the month for Classic CD magazine, and Critic’s Choice for Violinist’s note on the Concerto Gramophone magazine. Peter Sheppard Skærved is a Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Excellence in 1989, and made an Associate in 1995. He has given I first heard Rochberg’s Violin Concerto when I was a ten- intensity that his music demands. He will hold an master-classes and lectures all over the world and has recently been appointed a year-old, in the classic Stern recording. From the first anacrusis in the air between finger and thumb, as you play, visiting professor at the Xing-Jiang Conservatoire in northern China. He has a particularly strong relationship with I outburst from Stern’s fiddle, the ‘great barbaric yawp’ daring you to be the first to break the line or betray an Solisti di Zagreb and following many critically acclaimed concerts with them round the Balkans was named their which begins the concerto, I was transfixed, and terrified. emotion. For Rochberg, just as for Bartók, Beethoven or principal guest director in 2003. Peter Sheppard Skærved plays the 1699 ‘Adelina Crespi’ Stradivari. It suddenly dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea Frank Martin, the tiniest and largest gestures bear the same what went on in the world of music, the world beyond my fundamental imprimatur, just as the signature of a school, beyond the suburbs in which I was growing up. beautiful rugged coastline is fundamentally constant, seen Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra Until I heard the Rochberg Concerto, I never realised that from whatever altitude. the violin could be so aggressive, sexual, rhapsodic, It was a great relief to receive the reconstituted The Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra was established in 1946, at a time when every attempt was being made pleading, bullying, warlike, sentimental, or so damn concerto from Christopher Lyndon-Gee. Instead of a to restore normality to life disturbed by the ravages of war. Saarbrücken lies at the edge of the magnificent wine- frightening. This was my introduction to the music of my series of colourful tableaux, a sweep of inevitable growing and pâté-de-foie districts of Alsace, not far from Louis XIV’s fortress city of Saarlouis, amidst a region time, my first clue that there was a real world out there, development was revealed, not unlike Beethoven’s Op. contested for centuries. At the close of the second world war, it found itself French. In 1956, its citizens voted in a beyond the leafy suburbs where I was growing up. 131 Quartet, Sibelius’ Voces Intimæ or indeed, George’s referendum to rejoin Germany. Two miles from the present-day French-German border, they rejoice in their I was aware even then, however, that there was some own Third Quartet. It suddenly made sense. Along with cosmopolitan mix. Over the last 57 years, the symphony orchestra of Saarland Radio has become one of the most kind of problem with the work as I heard it. Whilst I could this restoration of structural unity, came out a coherence distinguished ensembles in Germany. Especially noteworthy were the thirteen years, beginning in 1971, of the music call to mind any of the dynamic coups de théâtre, timbres that had eluded me in the past, the sense of prolepsis, a directorship of Hans Zender, a pioneering composer-conductor, whose annual Music in the Twentieth Century and lush melody of the concerto, I simply could not recall natural ebb and flow to the drama. This lent ease to Festival, initiated commissions and first performances of works by Messiaen, Lachenmann, Zimmerman, Rihm, the order things arrived. My puzzlement increased learning this giant, rendering even the most fearsome Berio, Maderna, Nono and dozens of other contemporary figures. Consequently this orchestra shows great virtuosity studying Rochberg’s music, and later through meeting and precipices approachable, even inviting, and revealing to and freedom of playing style in many idioms. Since 2000 their music director has been Günther Herbig, who has working with him. George will sing every note of his me the intimacy that is at the heart of this monumental brought to the orchestra equal finesse in the great Austro-German repertoire of earlier times. works, illustrated with bird-like hand-waving, in order to work. ensure that he really gets the shapes, the drama and Peter Sheppard Skaerved
8.559129 4 5 8.559129 559129 bk Rochberg US 12/02/2004 10:31am Page 6
Christopher Lyndon-Gee Music, “History will not help us; but the past, which is taxing, both for the violinist and for the audience”. ever-present, can”. One recalls, too, William Faulkner’s Consequently, the composer’s manuscript reads like a Christopher Lyndon-Gee was nominated for a GRAMMY in 1998 for “Best Orchestral Performance” for the dictum : “the past - it is not even past!” litany of frustration and fatigue; the score ultimately signed ground-breaking complete works of Igor Markevitch (Marco Polo 8.223653, 8.223666, 8.223724, 8.223882, Rochberg is never about regret, borrowing or as a “final” version in June 1976, carries no less than seven 8.225054, 8.225076, 8.225120); and again in 2003 for the world première recording of George Rochberg’s quotation (even if only quotation “in kind”). The Universal corrected and crossed-out dates of completion. Nineteen Symphony No. 5 on Naxos American Classics. In 2001-2002, recordings for Naxos of Arcana and other works by Mind, which is there to be embraced by a composer pages of score, in all, were deleted, not to speak of Varèse (Naxos 8.554820), with the Polish National Radio Orchestra won rave notices worldwide, such as humble enough to deny ego and the flawed search for adjustments (simplifications) of quadruple stops, rewriting “musically, Christopher Lyndon-Gee blows Boulez away … extraordinarily communicative musicianship” from “originality” at all costs, transcends Time and Space. of some solo material into the orchestra, and so on. New York’s Classics Today, and “race out to buy the astounding Lyndon-Gee version … able to make these Denying individualism, seeing the creative artist as a I had been dimly aware that the work had undergone elements cohere with a strength and conviction that challenges the very best” from Répertoire, Paris. The representative of the endless procession of the human some changes at Stern’s instigation, but it was only when Gramophone, Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, and Fanfare have all recognized his work; while Australian critics’ condition, the purveyor of our collective memory, allows the Naxos project got under way and I began to prepare in organisations named him “Artist of the Year” and “Best Opera Conductor”, the latter for his conducting of the world the composer to gather the entirety of experience into a earnest that the dimensions of the work’s dismemberment première of Larry Sitsky’s The Golem at Sydney Opera House. single, integrated language. “The hope of contemporary became apparent. Late in 2000, Rochberg’s former Also a widely performed composer, Lyndon-Gee was honoured as Composer Laureate of the Onassis music”, writes Rochberg, “lies in learning how to reconcile composition student, the composer Stephen Jaffe, told me Foundation, Athens, in 2001; has won the Adolf Spivakovsky Prize; the ‘Sounds Australian’ Award (three times); all manner of opposites, contradictions, paradoxes; the past how anguished George had been at the time of the early and two MacDowell Fellowships. He is currently working on major orchestral works including The Auschwitz with the present, tonality with atonality. That is why, in my performances of the Violin Concerto. Armed with the Poems and Socrates’ Death, the latter commissioned for première at Canterbury Cathedral, in his native England, in most recent music, I have tried to utilize these in determination that this gave me, I proposed a possible 2004. During 2003, his setting of an ancient Greek Ode under the title The Temple of Athena Pronaea was premièred combinations which reassert the primal values of music.” restoration of the “original version” of the score. Rochberg in New York. In the same week, On the Theory of Cosmic Strings received its première by Peter Sheppard Skærved In the words of the Washington Post, reacted as if a long-lost friend had turned up from prisoner- at the Odense Festival, Denmark. For 2004, Lyndon-Gee has co-ordinated eight composers (including himself!) to of-war camp, a mixture of caution with intense excitement, set work of the great American poets William Meredith and Richard Harteis in honour of the former’s 85th birthday, “Rochberg presents the rare spectacle of a composer who hardly daring to believe the possibility, with a rushing back for a “Songbook” recital that will tour worldwide in more than 22 performances. has made his peace with tradition while maintaining a of love for something believed lost. Lyndon-Gee studied under Arthur Hutchings and Rudolf Schwartz in Great Britain, Franco Ferrara and strikingly individual profile …… he succeeds in To my astonishment, lengthy investigations revealed Goffredo Petrassi in Italy, and Igor Markevitch at Monte Carlo. Hearing him conduct a student concert in Rome, transforming the sublime concepts of traditional music into that merely a single copy of the complete score survives. Leonard Bernstein invited him to Tanglewood, where he met Bruno Maderna, becoming the latter’s assistant in contemporary language.” Rochberg had long since given his entire archive to public Milan. Erich Leinsdorf and Maurice Abravanel were also influential on his work. He enjoyed a busy early career as institutions, and latterly, to the Paul Sacher Foundation in pianist, specializing in contemporary repertoire, with over two hundred new works written for him. Today, his hectic George Rochberg’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Basel. I hastily copied the missing segments into pencil freelance career includes regular visits to orchestras in Germany, Italy, England, The Netherlands, Poland, Australia, has been one of his most frequently heard and most short score over a couple of days, and promptly mailed New Zealand, Sweden, Russia and several other countries; he serves also as Head of the Conducting School at New enthusiastically received works, being played 47 times by these to Rochberg. His response was immediate and York’s Adelphi University, combining this with constant travel. Isaac Stern, who instigated its commission, between 1975 unequivocal : “Put it all back!” As I commenced this task, and 1977. Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony beyond merely restoring cuts I recognised that some of the Orchestra in memory of Donald Steinfirst, esteemed music changes were indeed “improvements”, the kind of minor critic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it was also recorded adjustments almost every composer makes after a first set by Stern and that orchestra under André Previn in 1977. of performances (most famously Mahler, to his publisher’s The seventh of that long run of performances took place at and engraver’s dismay). Therefore I consulted closely with Carnegie Hall on 14th April, 1975, to a sold-out audience, George Rochberg at every stage, to arrive at a conflated many of whom had formed a queue around the block as far score that represents his final wishes. By January 2002 I as 56th Street, seeking last-minute tickets. Puzzlingly, it was able to begin to produce orchestral materials, that was following this enormously successful performance that would be used at the triumphant public première of the Isaac Stern began to request changes that resulted restored score, with the composer present, at the eventually in cuts totalling some fourteen minutes. The Kongresshalle, Saarbrücken, on March 17th, 2002. At this influential violinist felt that the work was “too long and stage, too, close collaboration with Peter Sheppard
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George Rochberg (b. 1918): Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1974) George World Première Recording of the restored Original Version (2001) ROCHBERG George Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey on 5th temporal structure”; to a world in which conglomerates of July, 1918. An accomplished pianist who worked his way pure sound are able to interact in ways that are not (b. 1918) through college playing in jazz bands in New York City, he necessarily hidebound by structural considerations. began formal studies of composition in 1939 at the Mannes “Subjective man,” writes Rochberg, “views existence Violin Concerto School of Music under Hans Weisse, George Szell and as change; himself and his history at the center of a process Leopold Mannes. He was seriously wounded during of becoming.. Subjective man cannot transcend time; he is (1974 rev. 2001 by Christopher Lyndon-Gee wartime service in Europe, subsequently resuming his trapped in it. However, when man seizes on the present studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in moment of existence as the only ‘real’ time, he spatializes in collaboration with the Composer) 1945 with Rosario Scalero. From 1951 he was Director of his existence; that is, he fills his present with objects that Publications for the music publishing house Theodore take on … a state of permanence.” Thus did the composer Presser, in 1960 becoming Chairman of the Music allow broader means of expression to be added to his Part One: Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1979 he vocabulary, constantly enlarging it, making possible what was designated Annenberg Professor of the Humanities, he later came to call an “all-at once world”. 1 Introduction: Allegro, ma un poco agitato e rubato molto 6:53 retiring from the University in 1983. By 1959, Rochberg was lionized as America’s first Rochberg’s music has been honoured since his earliest and greatest master of composition in a serial language. His 2 Intermezzo A: Moderato - Allegro assai - Tempo rigoroso - Precipitoso 8:07 substantial compositions, his Night Music receiving the 1955-56 Second Symphony, taken up and enthusiastically George Gershwin Memorial Award in 1953. Since then, given its première by George Szell, seemed to lay out a 3 (attacca) Fantasia: Adagio 7:39 Naumberg Recording Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, path for him as one of the leaders of the American avant- Honorary Doctorates, a Fellowship at the American garde, and yet, not even three years after its première, he Part Two: Academy in Rome, and Fulbright Scholarship in 1950-51 was rethinking his language, already dissatisfied with the (the year in which he met and befriended Luigi limitations of expressivity of the strict twelve-tone 4 Intermezzo B: Andante teneramente, calmato - Scherzoso - Adagio - Dallapiccola), the ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award environment. Having mastered the idiom, he was far ahead in 2000, and countless other honours have accumulated in of his time in seeking to go beyond it. Alla marcia, feroce, wild - Adagio, a piacere - Andante teneramente 18:35 ever greater profusion. In 1996 his manuscripts and papers The oft-repeated assertion that it was predominantly were acquired for the archives at the Paul Sacher personal tragedy that led Rochberg to abandon 5 Epilogue: Quasi mesto, sostenuto - Allegro, ma un poco agitato e rubato - Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. dodecaphony and embrace tonality, is not entirely borne The key that will open George Rochberg’s music to out by the facts. His evolution towards a multiplicity of Allegro moderato - Poco adagio, sostenuto - Adagio molto e sereno 10:26 the willing, the curious, but especially to the “innocent” simultaneous languages was already well in train from his ear, lies not in the conventional wisdom that declares him earliest compositions. Rochberg speaks of his use of the first “post modernist” for his openness to a complex twelve-tone techniques as engendering a “hard” mix of musical languages, but rather in seeking to enter the Romanticism (kin, perhaps, to the works of Alban Berg) - composer’s extraordinary understanding of the nature of one has only to look at the slow movement of the Second time. Symphony, Rochberg’s “serial” work par excellence, to see As long ago as 1963, Rochberg, in The New Image of that the tone row yields music that alternates between Music, wrote that the successive revolutions of twelve-tone melting, elegiac beauty and desperate explosions of composition and of the post-war avant-garde had brought anguish, ebullient self-confidence and profound tragedy. about a liberation that “permits sounds to create their own George Rochberg’s relationship with the past is thus not context”. This liberation of sound from tonal harmonic one of nostalgia: it is one of intimate, living familiarity. functions, led to “the overthrow of a long-dominant Indeed, he has said, in Reflections on the Renewal of
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MERICAN LASSICS Also available in this series: A C GEORGE ROCHBERG
Violin Concerto (Restored Original Version)
Peter Sheppard Skærved Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra 8.559115 Christopher Lyndon-Gee 8.559129 8 559129 rr Rochberg US 27/01/2004 12:44pm Page 1
CMYK N Playing George AXOS Time: 51:44 ROCHBERG (b. 1918) 8.559129 Made in Canada h broadcasting and copying of this compact disc prohibited. translations reserved. Unauthorised public performance, All rights in this sound recording, artwork, texts and
& AMERICAN CLASSICS g Violin Concerto 2004 Naxos Rights International Ltd. (1974 rev. 2001 by The Violin Concerto is at one and the Christopher Lyndon-Gee in same time George Rochberg’s most collaboration with the Composer) widely performed and least known work, ROCHBERG: ViolinConcerto since it was heavily cut in the “Stern 1 Introduction 6:53 version” played and recorded in the 1970s. Here, restored to the composer’s 2 Intermezzo A 8:07 wishes, the score’s primaeval vision of the 3 Fantasia 7:39 fate of man trapped in a neutral, unaware 4 Intermezzo B 18:35 universe is powerfully reasserted in music that stretches from anguish and anger, to 5 Epilogue 10:26 lyricism and an ending of unsurpassed tranquillity and transcendence. Peter Sheppard Skærved, Violin Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra WORLD PREMIERE Christopher Lyndon-Gee RECORDING A Co-Production with Saarländischer Rundfunk Recorded at the Halberg Broadcasting House, DDD Booklet notes in English
ROCHBERG: Violin Concerto ROCHBERG: Violin Saarländischer Rundfunk, Saarbrücken, Germany, from 16th to 18th April, 2002 Producer: Markus Brändle • Engineer: Erich Heigold www. Booklet Notes: Christopher Lyndon-Gee naxos.com 8.559129 A full track list can be found on page 7 of the booklet
With special thanks to Dr. Sabine Tomek, 8.559129 MusikChefin of Saarländischer Rundfunk. Cover Painting: George Rochberg © Helen Mirkil (By kind permission) AXOS 6 36943 91292 8
N American flag, folk artist, 1880s.