Word: kirchners
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Leon Kirchner's Piano Concerto, the week's toughest nut, which the composer played with the Philharmonic Symphony, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. It was romantic in its delicate, lyrical episodes, its sudden, violent climaxes, and the virtuosic intent of its solo part. It contained, as does all of Brooklyn-born Kirchner's music, many ideas of ear-bending originality that made flashes of beauty in a dark atmosphere. There were so many, in fact, that the listener became worn down before it was over...
...League of Composers has coaxed such patrons as Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin to ante up for new music, arranged commissions of many diverse items, e.g., Copland's bright Music for the Theatre (1925) and Leon Kirchner's almost atonal Sinfonia in Two Parts...
...Kirchner: String Quartet No. 1 (American Art Quartet; Columbia). A sample of the best modern style by a young composer who is going places...
...York City embroidery manufacturer, Leon Kirchner astounded his piano teacher by the time he was nine, was appearing in recitals and concerts at 14. But his mother wanted him to be a doctor, and he dutifully set out on a scientific education in Los Angeles (where the family moved in 1928). But music had him beguiled, particularly after he first heard compositions by Arnold Schoenberg. "A lecturer had described Schoenberg's work, all about the twelve-tone scale. As I listened I became frightened-afraid that if I listened to this strange music I might never be the same...
...Somehow, I didn't feel I had the constitution to be a concert artist," he says now. "That's a terribly demanding life, you know. You go insane trying to reach perfection." From Schoenberg ("an extremely articulate, extraordinarily precise man") Kirchner had learned that "any great teacher tries to teach you the why of things-not just chords, but 'why' chords. He teaches you how to extend music in time.'' Later, Kirchner studied with Ernest Bloch, learning from the noted composer "to respect the use, the real function, of materials." His next teacher...