Word: kirchners
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Unruffled Sheen. In a competition against 12 other groups, they did it. Then, instead of socking away the $20,000 prize money, they used part of it to commission a new work by U.S. Composer Leon Kirchner. His effort, a tense, tightly outlined piece enhanced by electronic sounds, won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize. Last fall the Beaux-Arts added stability to its growing reputation by moving into professorial chairs as quartet-in-residence at the State University of New York at Potsdam. Today, it stands in the select ranks of secure year-round ensembles that have proved that chamber music...
...Kirchner's Brahms was even more impressive. From the very beginning of the great Fourth Symphony, the conductor proved himself a master of nuance, varying his tempos flexibly. The tragic Andante moderato, with its famous Phrygian modality, was a gem. Opening furiously, the third movement, Allegro giocoso, joked only in its use of the triangle. The concluding Passacaglia, Allegro energico e passionato, was just that...
...accuse Luise Vosgerchian of lack of feel-spring of the Harvard Music Department, surely she is the dynamic spark. Yet her performance of Kirchner's Concerto No.2 (1963) with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra conducted by the composer was so dry, that the New England premiere of this magnificent work failed to capture on of its essential qualities...
Like his first Concerto, Kirchner's second is a highly evocative, emotionally-charged piece to be played with as much delicacy and sentiment as power and assertion. Except for one bar specifically marked "Lyrically," all that emerged from the piano Friday night was forceful, if controlled, declamation. The delicious orchestration, the fascinating, semi-indeterminate transition between the two movements, and the exquisite use of the celeste to close the composition could not compensate for the solid but harsh interpretation of the soloist...
...equally satisfying performance of the Kirchner Second Concerto is yet to come. Judging by the score, and his performance of the First many years ago (recorded with Mitropolous conducting on Columbia), Kirchner himself would seem the ideal choice for soloist...