AMERICAN CLASSICS WILLIAM BOLCOM Piano Music Three Dance Portraits • 12 Etudes Romantic Pieces • Dream Music #1 Constantine Finehouse • Estela Olevsky Ursula Oppens • Christopher Taylor CD 1 49:27 Night Pieces (1960) 7:13 William Bolcom (b. 1938) # I. Andante 1:30 Piano Music 1 New York Lights: $ II. = 86 0:32 % III. (IIa) Sostenuto 1:35 Several years ago Klaus Heymann of Naxos announced New York Lights: Concert Paraphrase Concert Paraphrase for Piano (2003) 3:32 ^ IV. = 92 1:38 his intention to record all my piano music. His original for Piano (2003) & V. Largo 1:58 Fantasy-Sonata (1961) 25:08 thought was to re-record even the works that were already available on CD, but I demurred – I didn’t want, 1999 saw the premiere of the opera A View from the 2 I. Maestoso, ma non largo 8:10 Conversations with Andre (1991–92) 4:09 3 II. Burlesque: Allegro, very rhythmic 2:58 for example, to ask Christopher Taylor to issue another Bridge, with Arnold Weinstein and myself collaborating with * I. Molto allegro 0:47 4 III. Andante, cantando ed un poco misterioso; disc of my 12 New Etudes when the original one was fine the original play’s author Arthur Miller, at Lyric Opera of ( II. Moderato, comodo 0:44 Variations; Andante 8:51 and still on the market – therefore I finally convinced Chicago. It was subsequently performed at The ) III. Presto 0:27 5 IV. Finale: Burlesqued Variations and coda 5:09 ¡ IV. Andantino; Più lento 0:49 Klaus to record only the works that weren’t easily Metropolitan Opera in 2002 with much of the original cast ™ V. Allegro risoluto 0:20 obtainable. and has been performed throughout America and in Rome. Three Dance Portraits (1983–86) 13:30 £ VI. Andante maestoso 1:02 This has turned out to be three discs, with music Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman in New York, has 6 1. The Dead Moth Tango 4:56 dating from my teens to much more recent work. Four had his world overthrown by the arrival of one of the two 7 2. Knock-Stück 4:13 ¢ Estela: Rag Latino (2010) 5:18 pianists – Christopher Taylor, Ursula Oppens, Estela stowaway cousins of his wife Beatrice, just arrived from 8 3. Abbacadabra 4:21 Olevsky and Constantine Finehouse – agreed to record, Sicily and now living with the Carbones in a tiny Night Meditations (2012) 8:42 Spring Dances (1956) 7:17 and most of these sessions took place at New York’s apartment in Brooklyn’s Red Hook. Rodolpho, a blond ∞ 1. Moderato 2:38 American Academy of Arts and Letters Auditorium in sweet-natured young man, has stolen the heart of Eddie’s 9 1. Lively 1:56 § 2. Cantabile 2:02 September and October 2014. niece Catherine, who also lives there. This awakens very 0 2. Slow and contemplative 1:38 ¶ 3. Lively; misterioso 2:43 I am also deeply grateful for the contributions from conflicted feelings in Eddie – not helped by Rodolpho’s ! 3. “Clowns”, fast and with humor 1:34 • 4. Calmo, moderato 1:19 @ 4. Cantabile 2:09 everyone who made this series of discs financially falling in love with New York, which he expresses in his possible. With the exception of the Barry S. Brook Center aria New York Lights (premiered by the tenor Gregory CD 2 60:53 CD 3 62:59 and one couple, all of the donors are from my adopted city Touray at Lyric). of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In it I invoked the style of the canzona napoletana 12 Etudes for Piano (1959–66) 35:29 Romantic Pieces (1959) 24:38 Rodolpho would be familiar with, a repertory widely Maurice and Linda Binkow thought of as a guilty pleasure by many opera fans. The Book 1 1 I. Andantino 1:25 2 II. Allegro grazioso 1:19 Barry S. Brook Center for Music pianist Bruce Levingston requested a piano ‘concert 1 1. Slowly, mysteriously 2:13 3 III. Lento sostenuto 4:02 Research and Documentation, paraphrase’ of Rodolpho’s aria and premiered it in April 2 2. Flowing, underground 1:38 4 IV. Presto ma non troppo 5:03 3 3. Sonorously, moderato 1:26 City University of New York 2004 in New York. 5 V. Andante grazioso e piacevole 4:19 4 4. With constrained expression 2:40 William and Nan Conlin New York Lights was commissioned by Premiere 6 VI. Chorale 2:21 Kerrytown Concert House Commission, Inc. for Bruce Levingston. 7 VII. Allegretto 6:09 Book 2 Jan and Hack Newman 5 5. Tranquil, mystic 3:05 Gil Omenn and Martha Darling Fantasy-Sonata (1961) 8 The Brooklyn Dodge (1972) 5:43 6 6. Scherzino – Variations 1:05 Zibby and Robert Oneal 7 7. Fast and declamatory; Ferociously; Scherzando 3:29 9 Fernando and Mary Sue Ortiz I shall never forget the first Domaine Musical concert in 8 8. Softly, very slowly 3:37 Variations on a Theme by George Rochberg (1986–87) 8:17 Judith Rumelhart Paris in the fall of 1959; organized by Pierre Boulez, the Richard and Norma Sarns new music group included Paris’s most virtuosic Book 3 Ed Surovell musicians (whom I would later join for a summer in Berlin 9 9. Tremolando 1:59 0 Dream Music #1 (1965) 11:11 0 10. Gestures 3:11 Robert Tisch in 1965; see notes for Dream Music #1). I had recently ! 11. Very rhythmic, light 1:26 ! Ballade (2006) 13:09 Ron and Eileen Weiser entered the Paris Conservatoire to study with Darius @ 12. Apotheosis; Slowly, with majesty Ruth and Avigdor Zaromp Milhaud, with whom I had already worked at Aspen in (In memoriam Béla Bartók) 9:40 1957 and Mills College in Oakland in 1958–59. I had never heard anything like most of the repertoire on that Three Dance Portraits (1983–86) 12 Etudes for Piano (1959–66) Scherzando, smoothness of passage from one hand to concert. the other. Boulez, having had to cover for the ailing Hans These three dance pieces are portraits of friends, each Quoting from my 1986 liner notes of the 12 Etudes for Etude 8: Evenness and control of tone. Rosbaud for earlier concerts that season, finally was wonderful pianists but known mostly in other ways: Piano (1959–66) on Advance Records: “In 1963 I wrote a listed as conductor of the ensemble for (I was told) the Dennis Russell Davies is a conductor; Curtis Curtis-Smith set of three etudes which included earlier versions of Nos. Book III first time ever. I remember the Schoenberg was a composer; Abba Bogin conducted orchestras in 1, 10 and 11; No. 4 dates from 1959, but most of the rest Etude 9: Continual tremolo without cease. Exercise in Kammersymphonie, Op. 9 (the one piece I did know) concert, on Broadway, and also in films and commercials. were written in Paris and Seattle in 1964–66. (I premiered relaxation. played at what seemed double speed, but my strongest A publisher putting out a new tango collection sent me an the first version of the Etudes in 1964 in Paris, but the set Etude 10, Gestures: Leaps, use of sostenuto pedal. memory is of a stunning piece for three orchestras, application form which arrived one hot summer day. As I was crystallized in 1966 and I premiered the final version Speeds of phrases or ‘gestures’ and spacing between Allelujah II by Luciano Berio. The Boulez-Berio- was reading the form, a moth fell on the page and I struck at the University of Washington); the Advance issue is a them are left to the discretion of the performer, who may Stockhausen triumvirate was paramount in the European it without thinking. That insect gave its life to award me recording of that concert.” eliminate certain ‘gestures’ according to taste but may new music scene, Webern was considered the avatar of a the title; its corpse is preserved under Scotch tape on The What follows is a recognition that the total not change their order. new, serially oriented, often aggressive music shorn of Dead Moth Tango’s manuscript title page. (Premiere by chromatic/serialist hegemony that seemed to be making Etude 11: Rhythms, lightness of touch. Sustained line tonality and free from tradition, and I was bowled over by Davies, Saarbrücken, Germany, May 1984.) an inexorable change in art-music in 1966, turned out, in with staccato. the utter newness of it. Knock-Stück features – along with knocking sounds, 20 years, not to be. I had designed the Etudes to be Etude 12, Apotheosis, in memoriam Béla Bartók: Use of Returning to the States in 1961 I found nothing in played on the wood of the instrument or on woodblocks – relevant to a wide range of difficult 1960s contemporary real, proportional and free rhythmic notation, clusters, New York but rejection of the whole European scene. a type of syncopation found often in Curtis-Smith’s piano repertoire by Boulez, Messiaen, Martirano, and use of inside of piano; varied types of touch. While earning my doctorate at Stanford I began to play compositions: sixteenths tied over to dotted eighths. The Stockhausen and others. Accordingly, I prefaced each music of those three composers (and others like Henri middle trio-like section has a languorous, cocktail music etude with ‘declarations of intent’ reproduced here: There is a current revival of interest among musicians in Pousseur and Olivier Messiaen) in San Francisco and the quality in contrast to the spooky mood of the opening. the post-war ‘difficult’ music period, now thankfully shorn Bay Area, about the only place in the United States along (Premiere by Bolcom, Charlemont, Mass., July 1987.) Book I of the ideological bullying of that long-past era.