Word: fosse
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Structure & Sound. As if the sounds of Composer Lukas Foss's Time Cycle are not startling enough, the piece is curiously episodic-only 20 minutes long and based on four disparate texts...
Conductor's Compliment. Foss's experiment in time is so challenging that at its premiere, almost two years ago, Conductor Leonard Bernstein insisted on playing the piece a second time for a discriminating 400 that lingered at concert's end to try to find out exactly what they had heard. (Said Lenny to the 400: "I compliment you.") Since then, many a conductor has deemed Time Cycle worthy of one, if not two, hearings, and it has become a frequently performed modernist work. Last week at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ont., it was played with Foss...
...Stratford performances were interrupted by sessions of "controlled improvisation" in which the performers tried to make musical comment on the material. Although the improvisations left the crowd bewildered (Foss considers them optional), the piece as a whole brought an ovation. Composer Foss, who now plans "to withdraw from the improvised approach." may add to . Time Cycle by inserting poems in Italian and French. But he was more than satisfied with last week's performance. Said he modestly: "It's a good vehicle for musicians when the performers...
...music around here frequently suffers from a total separation between the cerebral, arm-chair composer and the practicing performer. The Lukas Foss Improvisation Chamber Ensemble showed how delightful the result can be, when the writing hand knoweth what the performing hand doth. Spontaneity is the obvious thing to expect of an improvisation ensemble, but a surprising coherence revealed careful planning. The rare feeling that the music and the instruments had to go together gave the sounds a special excitement...
...woman suggested that the work for piano four hands-two on the keyboard (Lukas Foss) and two with mallets on the strings inside--be called "Murder in the Cathedral." In "Air Antique," cellist Howard Colf's delicate, ghostly left hand pizzicati held the audience literally gaping. Assisting countertenor Richard Levitt transformed his voice into a dazzling clarion in an improvisation on an Italian madrigal, "Dolcissima mia vita...