PROGRAM NOTE
[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 1970’s bashing has become a favorite past time activity for a great many composers at this particular moment in history. “Modernistic,” “progressive,” or “advanced” style are terms which only thinly disguise derision and contempt right now. The word “academic,” in its current usage, has a decidedly unpleasant ring to it.
Indeed, I too have some less than happy memories of struggling to find my own voice amidst what seemed, in the 1960’s, to be two irreconcilable, equally doctrinaire, similarly problematic polarities of ultra rationality vs. total irrationality. And yet, when I look back at the time I composed my CONCERT PIECE for Piano and Orchestra, I know it was also a fantastically exciting time for me, a time of discovery, of giddily experiencing for the first time the thrill of exploring what were, for me, heretofore unchartered roads.
In retrospect, two works I composed in 1968 and 1969, Hatzvi Israel Eulogy and O the Chimneys, respectively, both for female voice and instruments, seem germinal. In them I found myself assimilating some of the intensely dramatic and personal tendencies of German Expressionism. And, perhaps for the first time, I was able to create musical utterances in what is customarily thought of as non-tonal language (I must confess to having great difficulties with such terms, as they are very much a matter of definition), an experience I could only compare to being thrown into a weightless orbit, and which, in spite of my profound love for music written during the great tonal period, I found exhilarating! A year later, eager and ready to tackle the composition of CONCERT PIECE (written for myself to perform as pianist), new sound worlds, those of the Polish avant-garde, of Messiaen, and perhaps Berio, were capturing my imagination. Today I know that all of these, and others, were central to my development as a composer, and consider myself fortunate to have grown up in a time when composers reveled in the adventure of seeking new ways of stretching the horizons of our understanding.
Though not my first orchestral work—several earlier works written in my teens have also enjoyed professional performances—today I view the CONCERT PIECE as my first orchestral score which, stylistically, is representative of me as s composer.
—Shulamit Ran
INFORMATION
Premiere performances:
July 12, 13, 15, 1971
Shulamit Ran, piano
Zubin Mehta, conductor
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
The Mann Auditorium,
Tel Aviv, Israel
SHEET MUSIC
Available from your favorite sheet music seller, or directly from Theodore Presser.