PROGRAM NOTE For many years the clarinet has played a special role in my music, its huge range of possibilities and powerful dramatic potential allowing for fresh explorations in a variety of contexts, its “soul” having been intertwined with important aspects of my compositional “voice.” In a single movement, my Clarinet Concerto can be heard…
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PROGRAM NOTE [Historical note: The USS President Warfield was a battle-scarred, Baltimore-based luxury-steamer-turned-naval-vessel during World War II when it was secretly bought by the Jewish underground movement Haganah, with funding by the American Jewish community. Under a mostly American volunteer crew it sailed in 1947 to the Mediterranean, loading at the French port of Sète…
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Vast spaces, traversing a broad range of emotional states, their point of origin a singing legato melody played by the horn, and from there on to ever more. From the passionate to the intimate; from the tumultuous and jangling to the celebratory. A wide array of themes and motifs, diverse characters clashing, evolving, vying for…
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PROGRAM NOTE My Concerto for Violin and Orchestra is a work of some 30 minutes cast in three movements. Each movement explores certain facets of the violin’s complex personality, or “soul.” The classically proportioned first movement, taken as a whole, is rather mercurial in character, ranging the gamut from the lyrical and deeply expressive to…
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PROGRAM NOTE My having been commissioned by the National Flute Association for a flute concerto in celebration of that organization’s year 2000 convention was, for me, a much-relished opportunity to further explore the direction I found myself pursuing in two earlier compositions — EAST WIND for solo flute (1987), and MIRAGE for five instrument (1991)…
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[This program note was written for the work’s premiere performance in 1987.] CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA is the latest in an ongoing series of compositions began in the mid 1970’s in which an exploration, at least on one level, of the relationship between a given work’s formal/dramatic essence and its chosen instrumentation is a significant compositional…
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Premiere performances: July 12, 13, 15, 1971Shulamit Ran, pianoZubin Mehta, conductorIsrael Philharmonic OrchestraThe Mann Auditorium, Tel Aviv, Israel [The following note was written in 1991 for the program book of the performances by the Cleveland Orchestra with pianist Alan Feinberg and Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor.] In retrospect, twenty-one years later, it seems that 1960’s and…
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Commissioned by WFMTfor its fortieth anniversary on December 13, 1991 Premiere performances: December 12, 13, 14, 17, 1991Chicago Symphony OrchestraPierre Boulez, conductorOrchestra Hall, Chicago Duration: c. 5’ Program Notes Chicago Skyline is a short celebratory piece commissioned by Chicago’s Fine Arts Radio Station WFMT for performance by the Chicago Symphony in December 1991, honoring the…
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