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Composition at the Crossroads
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19803 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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5 / 1991 |
2,351 Words |
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David Eaton
David Eaton is music director of the New York City Symphony. |
The 1990-91 concert season marks the centennial of the founding of Carnegie Hall. Throughout the season this Pantheon among concert halls is playing host to the world greatest artists, representing virtually every realm of the performing arts. One of the most significant endeavors of Carnegie's centennial celebration is the Centennial Commissioning Project. Thirteen composers have been commissioned to write commemorative works that will receive their premieres at Carnegie Hall and Weill Recital Hall (formerly Carnegie Recital Hall) during the course of the season.
Carnegie Hall has been the birthplace of many new works by some of music's most legendary composers. Antonin Dvorak's New World Symphony, Richard Strauss' Symphonia Domestica, Zoltan Kodaly's Hary Janos Suite, and George Gershwin's Piano Concerto and An American in Paris are but a few of the works that received their world premieres at Carnegie Hall.
The composers selected to participate in the Centennial Project demonstrate a wide range of compositional traditions and styles. The established Modernists are represented by Bernard Rands, Sir Michael Tippett, Toru Takemitsu, and Alfred Schnittke, the Neo-Romanticists by George Rochberg and Ned Rorem, the Minimalists by Terry Riley, and the younger American Modernists by Anthony Davis and Joan Tower.
During the first week of February, four of the commemorative pieces received premieres, and several other works by notable American composers were featured on centennial programs. Having eight contemporary works by some of America's most celebrated composers presented in the short span of a week provided a unique opportunity to assess the current stage of the art.
To be sure, there were a few surprises, a few hits, and quite a few misses among the week's offerings. Some compositions were quite "audience-friendly"; others were agonizingly difficult to listen to.
Terry Riley's The Jade Palace for large orchestra and synthesizers, one of the Carnegie commissions, managed to be both friendly and agonizing. Riley, who is considered by many to be the father of the Minimalist movement, had not written for large forces prior to this attempt and he was admittedly taken aback by the prospect of composing such a large-scale work for the Centennial Project. The Jade Palace was easily the most ambitious work of the week, and the results were
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