BMG was having one of its sales (during which I picked up, inter alia,
Volume VII of Koopman's Bach Cantatas for the price of one CD) and I saw
Sony's (SMK 63165 [BMG D 122645] of works by Lukas Foss.

The last item on it was Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic w/
Jennie Tourel singing *Song of Songs* and as I was listening to it, there
was this flash of recognition!  I remembered hearing this work on the
radio fifty years ago and never again since.  (This recording was made in
Brooklyn's St.  George Hotel, at the time the largest in NYC, in 1958, and
can't be the performance I recall hearing).  I find it now (as I may not
have then) a powerful work, listening to which now, I am enjoying.

The penultimate item on the CD is "Phorion" something new for me.  It's a
setting of the Prelude from Bach's Partita in E for solo violin ("Phorion"
is the Greek word for stolen goods.).  According to the liner notes by
Edward Downes (which were taken from the original LP notes), Foss himself
described the work as follows:

   "The idea for this composition came to me one summer night in 1966,
   while asleep.  I had been working on my Cello Concerto for Rostropovich
   of which the last movement is based on a Bach Sarabande.  In my dream
   I heard (or saw) torrents of Baroque sixteenth notes washed ashore
   by ocean waves, sucked in again, returning, *ad infinitum*.  this
   rather basic dream vision only began to interest me when, upon
   wakening, the technical realization of my dream suddenly became clear
   to me in terms of a composition:  Groups of instruments play and keep
   playing, inaudibly, tonelessly.  Only whcn called upon by the conductor
   do they emerge for a moment, then submerge again into inaudibility
   on another conductorial sign.  These signals are given at different
   moments to different instruments or groups of instruments and in
   varying order, so that even the conductor cannot keep track of the
   point at which a certain instrument will have arrived at its inaudible
   rendition when he calls upon it to emerge.

   "I decided to use (borrow, steal) the Prelude...by Bach.  I also
   decided to use normal strings, organ (preferably electronic since
   the fading in and out is characteristic of electronic instruments),
   an electronically amplified harpsichord or electric piano and an
   amplified harp or electric guitar.

   "My score is made out of the Bach Prelude in every detail; the Bach
   piece is used as if no other notes were available.  this purism of
   technique seemed to me essential lest the piece deteriorate into a
   melange or potpourri."

   It's not the same as hearing the movement in its intended form but
   it's fun.  It reminded me that Foss was also the person who had
   prepared *The Art of Fuguing."

Working my way back to the CD's beginning, there is "Time Cycle"
comprising, w/ orchestral interludes, setting to "We're Late" by Auden,
"When the Bells Justle" by Housman; "Sechzehnter Januar", a page from
Kafka's diaries; and "O Mensch, gib Acht" from Nietzsche's Zarathustra, w/
Adele Addison, soprano, Lukas Foss, piano, Howard D. Colf, cello, Richard
Dufallo, clarinet, and Charles Delancey, vibes, and Leonard Bernstein
conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

Walter Meyer