21ST CENTURY MUSIC MARCH 2002 INFORMATION FOR SUBSCRIBERS 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC is published monthly by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. ISSN 1534-3219. Subscription rates in the U.S. are $84.00 (print) and $42.00 (e-mail) per year; subscribers to the print version elsewhere should add $36.00 for postage. Single copies of the current volume and back issues are $8.00 (print) and $4.00 (e-mail) Large back orders must be ordered by volume and be pre-paid. Please allow one month for receipt of first issue. Domestic claims for non-receipt of issues should be made within 90 days of the month of publication, overseas claims within 180 days. Thereafter, the regular back issue rate will be charged for replacement. Overseas delivery is not guaranteed. Send orders to 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. e-mail: [email protected]. Typeset in Times New Roman. Copyright 2001 by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC. This journal is printed on recycled paper. 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(Valley Forge, PA: European American Music Corporation, 1982), in addition to back issues of this journal. Typescripts should be sent to 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. e-mail: [email protected]. Materials for review may be sent to the same address. INFORMATION FOR ADVERTISERS Send all inquiries to 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. e-mail: [email protected]. 21ST CENTURY MUSIC March 2002 Volume 9, Number 3 INTERVIEW Food for Thought with Steven Gerber 1 MICHAEL DELLAIRA CONCERT REVIEWS A La Kazan (II) 7 ANTON ROVNER Cogan and Escot Tie in Excellence 7 Alea IV 8 Lyric and Resurrection 9 Just Do It Again 9 Aethetics of Ursula 10 Conservatively Contemporary 11 Boykan Dinosaur Celebration 11 Merrill Schulte 12 Schwartz Tribute 10 DAVID CLEARY Maverick Awakenings 13 DAVID L. BARRY Pan-American Pleasures 14 MICHAEL MCDONAGH Ridin' the Range 15 DAVID MECKLER Old, New, Borrowed, Red 16 EDMUND KIMBELL Beethoven Strikes Again 17 MARK ALBURGER Mostly Milk 17 JEFF DUNN Boss Bernstein 18 Portrait of the Concert as a Recent Hike 18 MARK ALBURGER CALENDAR For March 2002 19 CHRONICLE Of January 2002 20 WRITERS 23 COVER ILLUSTRATION Food for Thought Food for Thought with Steven Gerber MICHAEL DELLAIRA STEVEN R. GERBER was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C., DELLAIRA: So I guess the reception was positive enough for you to received degrees from Haverford College and from Princeton make return trips. University. Two CDs of Gerber's orchestral works were released on major labels in 2000.Chandos issued his Symphony #1, Dirge and GERBER: Right. Awakening, Viola Concerto, and Triple Overture, played by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra under Thomas Sanderling, with Lars DELLAIRA: How many trips in all have you made? Anders Tomter, viola, and the Bekova Sisters Trio. Koch International Classics, under a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund GERBER: It would take me a while to count them. I've been to for Music, released his Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto, and Moscow probably ten times and then there were a couple times when Serenade for String Orchestra, played by the National Chamber I went just to Kiev or just to Talinn to Bulgaria for a festival once, Orchestra under Piotr Gajewski, with soloists Kurt Nikkanen and and once to some performances in Romania, all of which came out of Carter Brey. In addition to his success in the United States, Mr. the Russian traveling. Gerber has becomes perhaps the most often-played living American composer in the former Soviet Union, which he has toured 10 times DELLAIRA: So did those experiences in any way help shape the since 1990, and where he has received literally dozens of orchestral kind of music you were going to write? In other words, if you were performances and numerous concerts of his solo and chamber music getting lots of performances there and you get very positive feedback, does that in any way determine your next piece? DELLAIRA: Is it true that you may well be the most performed American composer in Russia? GERBER: Well, it certainly affected what instruments I wrote for-I mean I wrote a piano concerto thinking I could probably get it played GERBER: Well, I may have been, but I haven't been going that there. I wrote a violin concerto for Kurt Nikkanen, an American much recently. violinist, but I knew I could arrange performances for him over there. And actually when I wrote my cello concerto for Carter Brey, it was DELLAIRA: How did that all come about? It's a rather strange with the idea that I could probably get him performances there, but it distinction for an American composer. ended up we did it in America and we never did it in Russia. But only to that extent. I don't think it affected my style at all. As I say, GERBER: Right. My career there started completely by accident oddly enough, maybe it worked the other way around, that the reason and the really odd thing is that my symphony, which a lot people some of the music was successful there was that it sounded Russian, think sounds very Russian, was written before I had the slightest rather my writing music that sounded Russian because I'd been there. inkling I would ever go. I suppose it was influenced by the fact that I don't think it affected me as a composer. I'd been listening to and studying a lot of Shostakovich. I certainly had no idea I would ever go to Russia. My father was born in Russia DELLAIRA: It's also interesting that the music would be popular -- in what is now the Ukraine -- and just by chance in 1990 I met a because it sounded Russian, rather than because it sounded second cousin of mine who's a Russian émigré and had been the American. executive director of the opera and ballet house in Kishinev, the capitol of Moldova. He'd been in this country for many years but GERBER: Yes!. And pieces of mine that I think sound very we'd never met and he was very excited to find out that he had a American to them would sound Russian and I wouldn't know what cousin who was a composer. When that happened he arranged a tour they were talking about. But it's true their idea of American music is for me in the Soviet Union in October of 1990. The music was a things like Bernstein and Gershwin. Jazz influenced, pop influenced. success and he already had a lot of contacts from his days there, and There is one guy in St. Petersburg who runs a very well known dance he made a lot more. company who really liked my symphony a lot and has been talking about making a ballet to it or to some other music of mine. And he DELLAIRA: How many performances were there on that trip? said once, you know I didn't know an American could write a symphony. Rather offensive, frankly! GERBER: There must have been about half a dozen concerts in different places, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kishinev, Yaroslavl, DELLAIRA: So would you consider this period a kind of a phase? Rybinsk, and Talinn, which is the capital of Estonia. I performed in The Gerber Russian period? all those concerts too. In fact one of them was almost a piano recital, although I ended up having a violinist play with me. That would've GERBER: As far as going there, yes. From what I hear, things have been the second piano recital I'd played in my life - the other was changed there a lot and very few people want to do anything now when I was sixteen. The concert in Talinn was the only one in which without getting paid for it. So a composer comes or a conductor I played some music not by myself: I did the Copland Piano comes, they're expected to pay for the privilege, so I'm told. I'm sure Variations and some little Prokofiev pieces, but otherwise these were that's not completely true. Mostly I sort of got tired of going there, all concerts just of my music. A few of them with orchestras, some and I didn't feel I needed it that much for my career and also I like to with string quartets, some with violinists, some with a singer. Very go to interesting places when I get my pieces performed. Russia is a much like 19th century concerts where you have both orchestra music fascinating place, but at least the major cities where all the good and chamber music and vocal music all thrown in together. There performers are I've seen so many times that I don't have a great desire was one performance of my Serenade for Strings and three of my to go back again.