Author: Mark Berry

Rochberg’s Big Break

The announcement that Jennifer Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto gave David Patrick Stearns a chance to look back on notable Philadelphia composers of the past and identify some, including Higdon, that are coming into their own.
George Rochberg was one of the older generation that Stearns discussed. Like Higdon, Rochberg taught at the Curtis Institute–he was also a student there, continuing a music career suspended when he went overseas to fight in World War II. 
But it was in 1958, after Rochberg left Curtis to work for the music publisher Presser, that a chance meeting on Chestnut Street with an old mentor set in motion a series of events that would bring him to national prominence. 
The composer remembers hearing someone call his name: “Roschbergh, Roschbergh.” It was George Szell. The Hungarian conductor taught Rochberg in New York at the Mannes School, shortly before he was drafted in 1942. Szell was an aloof teacher, and Rochberg was taken aback by the informality of the greeting. He was even more shocked when Szell called him a few weeks later to say, “Roschbergh, I am going to do your Second Symphony.” 

http://www.youtube.com/p/3569FADC2D403A76&hl=en_US&fs=1

And he did. The world premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra was a huge success. In February 1960, Szell reprised the work at Carnegie Hall; in 1961, the piece won a Naumberg award, leading to a performance and recording on Columbia with the New York Philharmonic. 
Although Rochberg thought the recording was poor, it, along with the high-profile performances of his Symphony No. 2 by Cleveland and Szell, solidified his position as a leading American composer. 

Rock Albums Should Win Pulitzers

When John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls won in 2003, some people grumbled that it won because it was written to commemorate 9/11. The real shame was that there was so much better rock music from that year that deserved consideration.

Wilco released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002, and the Flaming Lips put out Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

A lot of people have complain that the Pulitzer jury ignores jazz and rock, and there is a history there. But they can only judge what is nominated. This year, let’s call their hand. Why not nominate The Hold Steady for Heaven is Whenever? Or The National. People seem to like them.

Steve Smith likes the Slow Six. He should nominate them.

I’d nominate Broken Social Scene for their new album (their truly awesome You Forgot It in People came out in 2002) but the Pulitzer winner has to be written by an American.

Barber Update: Violin Concerto

Barber’s 100th birthday is coming up in just over a week, making it the perfect time to hear what is maybe the composer’s second most famous piece.

Tomorrow at 2 PM, and again at 8 PM, Gil Shaham will play Barber’s Violin Concerto with David Robertson and the New York Philharmonic. Barber wrote the Violin Concerto in 1939, in the wake of Toscanini’s broadcast of the Adagio for Strings (his best known music by a long shot) with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the violinist who it was commissioned for originally rejected the piece. It wasn’t premiered until 1941with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Arthur Spalding. (The New York Phil’s online program notes can tell you more.)

WQXR will broadcast the concert on Thursday, March 11.

If you want more Barber, look to the Baltimore Symphony in June, when they’ll present both his opera A Hand of Bridge and his Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

Barber’s Vanessa: The Great American Opera That Wasn’t

To commemorate Samuel Barber’s centenary, the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts a performance from the first run of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa on Saturday, and it’s worth pointing out how momentous an occasion the 1958 premiere was. Just as people had always been on the lookout for the great American novel in the first half of the twentieth century, so were music fans waiting for an American opera to enter the classical music canon.

At first, it seemed that Vanessa (synopsis here) would fit the bill. Local critics were quick to praise it, emphasizing that the work was not just good, it was homegrown. Barber won his first of two Pulitzer Prizes on the strength of the work. But after word got back to the US that performances at the Salzburg Festival were unsuccessful and small audiences in the 1958-1959 season, Vanessa was out of the Met’s repertory. The company presented a revised version of the opera in 1965, but by then Vanessa had lost its luster.

I’ve been getting to know this opera over the last couple of days, and have particularly enjoyed the Act I aria “Must the Winter Come So Soon,” performed here by Frederica von Stade at a 1992 gala with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and James Conlon.

North Carolina Dance Theatre Gala Tonight

The North Carolina Dance Theatre just finished up its perennial run of Nutcracker performances, and it will be opening its new Patricia McBride & Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance on Tryon Street, just uptown from the Knight Theater, later this year.

The Dance Theater gala comes on the heels of the January 2 opening of Charlotte’s new Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (photos here and here), part of the Wells Fargo Cultural Campus. This two-block-long strip on South Tryon Street includes the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts+Culture and the Mint Museum uptown expansion, which is set to open in October. 

Cheesy Classical Music You Should Know: Barber’s Adagio for Strings

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings has been repeatedly popping into popular consciousness to signify tragic loss since its auspicious 1938 premiere on an NBC Symphony Orchestra broadcast with Arturo Toscanini (which you can hear courtesy of NPR.org).

Originally composed as part of Barber’s second string quartet, the Adagio for Strings was heard on the radio when FDR died. Barber arranged it in 1967 for choir as an Agnus Dei.

Adagio for Strings is part of the soundtracks for 1980s classics The Elephant Man and Platoon. On September 15, 2001, Leonard Slatkin and the BBC Symphony Orchestra closed London’s annual Proms concerts with the piece.

Barber’s centenary is this March (the composer died in 1981), so now is a perfect time to get to know (again) his most famous music, a work that has become an almost universal musical symbol for catharsis in the face of loss.

New York Phil’s New Year’s Eve, or How to Invigorate a US Orchestra

It was great to see the New York Philharmonic ring in the new year with its all-American program of Copland, Gershwin, and show tunes with Thomas Hampson. This is entertaining music, and certainly more a part of New York culture than the dusty old 19th-century European stuff the orchestra did last year. 

Alan Gilbert has made a strong commitment (at least relative to most) to American music this season, and that’s a good thing. It’s invigorated the orchestra and its audiences too.

Struggling orchestras such as the Charlotte Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra might do well to follow the Phil’s lead. Don’t assume that people want the usual classical-music standards all the time. And don’t apologize for presenting American music that’s new to audiences–believe in it, make it an important part of your programming. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Hear New York Phil’s First Contact! Concert Online

From now until January 11, you can stream the first concert in the New York Philharmonic’s Contact! series at the orchestra’s website, nyphil.org. There are also videos with one of the composers, Arthur Kampela, Alan Gilbert, who founded the series, and Magnus Lindberg, who conducted the December 17 show at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side.

WQXR.org, which also webcast the concert on their Q2 stream, has interviews with the composers and critical reaction from various bloggers on their site.