Word: leese
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After four years in Europe on three different fellowships, the young American composer Benjamin Lees was fast approaching the day when he would become a public trust. He labored quietly over his compositions, as first Guggenheim, then Copley, then Fulbright supported him. He wrote a symphony and some chamber music...
But last week Composer Lees heard his notes turned to music. Violinist Henryk Szeryng and the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed Lees's Violin Concerto in two New York concerts, and its excellence, together with the skimpy monetary rewards he can expect, make a very good case for giving Lees...
Lees is as boldly out of fashion in musical form as he is cheerfully out of step by choosing to be a composer of serious music. His concerto violates the three-movement, fast-slow-fast style that has persisted since Mozart. The work opens with two brooding, songful movements in...
Such successes are about all Lees can expect from his music. "If you start asking yourself why art doesn't pay and how you can make it pay, you've got a problem that will kill you," he says. "It's enough to work out something in...
Tchin-Tchin sees the world through a whisky glass, as a couple of wistful rejects drink the lees of abandonment by their mutually unfaithful spouses. Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn are amusing, affecting and effulgent.