GEORGE ROCHBERG.  SYMPHONY NO. 5 [28:47]  BLACK SOUNDS [14:25]
TRANSCENDENTAL VARIATIONS [17:46]  TT: 61:03.

Saarbruecken Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Christopher Lyndon-Gee.

Naxos (American Classics) 8.559115

George Rochberg, born in 1918, is one of the most significant composers
of the second half of the 20th Century.  For one thing, after beginning
as an outstanding serialist, he was the composer most associated with
the beginnings of postmodernism in music when he decided that the feelings
he wanted his music to express were such that that style could not
accommodate them.  His Concord Quartets and his Violin Concerto marked
that change.

My own acquaintance with Rochberg's music goes back over four decades
when I heard George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra perform Rochberg's
Second Symphony in Carnegie Hall, when I was young and open to all things
new.  Billed at the time as the longest composition based on a single
tone row, though not strictly, this symphony held my rapt attention
throughout and ended in what seemed like a satisfying tonal resolution.
(Edward Downes in his program notes to the Columbia recording said he
heard the development as tonal also.) The audience seemed to be at one
with my response.  Not long after that, I attended a chamber ensemble
concert at Cooper Union in New York, organized and conducted by Pierre
Boulez, then Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, at which
Rochberg was present for the performance of one of his works.  I forget
which.  It's been a very long time.  In the 1980's I drove to Tanglewood
from Boston to hear Isaac Stern play Rochberg's Violin Concerto which
was getting coverage in the press (Newsweek, for instance) at the time
because of what it represented as a musical milestone (along with
Penderecki's first Violin Concerto.) However, aside from Slow Fires of
Autumn, for flute and harp in a Japanese style, which I have discussed
online several times without much response from anyone, I have heard
little of his music recently.  Significantly the (1980) recording of
that simultaneously exciting and restful work was on CRI, not on a
commercial recording.

My justification for relating this personal history is that it rather
parallels the public attention Rochberg has had over the years.  Take
this recently recorded Fifth Symphony (1985).  The premiere was about
eighteen years ago, with the Chicago Symphony under Georg Solti.  Has
it been performed since?  No it has not.  In fact, the present Naxos
recording took place, in the absence of a public performance, only in
the studio.  After the final take, as there was time remaining, the
orchestra gave a private performance for the composer and his wife.
But it is a powerful symphony and is very much worth hearing.  I will
come back to it.

Meanwhile, in all honesty, I suppose it is a reflection of the reactionary
turn my taste has taken in recent years that I bought this disc in Borders
because on the back it said that the "Transcendental Variations (1975)
is one of the most searingly beautiful works ever conceived for the
intimate medium of the string orchestra." How could anyone pass that up?
A reworking of the slow movement of Rochberg's Third String Quartet and
a tribute to Mahler, this exquisite piece has seven sections, all slow
and quiet, with markings like "amoroso," "adagio sereno," "molto adagio
e tranquillo" and "Moving gently" (!) Need more be said?  Lyndon-Gee
thinks the title has to do with Rochberg's philosophy and not the Concord
group, but I think he may be mistaken about that.

The symphony does require more comment.  The opening sounds like
Francesca da Rimini revisited in her eternal whirlwind unrest a century
later.  This work also has seven sections, but is in a single movement.
Christopher Lyndon-Gee, in his extensive note (which includes a discussion
of Rochberg's "extraordinary understanding of the nature of time"),
distinguishes an opening statement, three episodes, two development
sections and a finale.  The quiet central episode is extraordinary and
is worth the price of this disc several times over.  It is for four
horns, with some unusual sonorities, and lasts about five and a half
minutes.  (This section will be of interest to all brass players; in
fact the commission originally carried the stipulation from the--at that
point anonymous George Szell--that the work be a concerto for brass.)
The other episode is lyrical, with the remaining, dramatic, sections on
the harrowing side: not unrelenting though; there are some long rests.

Black Sounds is the earliest of these three works, each a decade apart
in time of composition, and is a tribute to Varese.  I can't say that I
am fond of it.  It tends to be snarly, harsh and dissonant, though there
are some gentler passages, and the use of percussion is interesting.  It
could grow on me.

Jim Tobin

Copyright 2004 by R. James Tobin