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David Diamond
Most twentieth-century chamber music lovers are familiar with the string quartet literature of composers such as Bartók and Shostakovich because the complete cycles are readily available on CD. This, however, has not been the case with twentieth-century American master David Diamond (born on July 9, 1915, in Rochester, New York), since only one of his eleven quartets is currently available. This lamentable situation, though, is about to be rectified, as Volume I of a projected four-part series now appears in a recording by the Potomac String Quartet, based in Washington, DC.
Since Diamond had begun to compose at a very young age and had early on shown an impressive musical talent, he began to study violin with André de Ribaupierre when the family moved to Cleveland. The Swiss violinist also introduced the young musician to Maurice Ravel in 1928. In 1929, Diamond worked with composer Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School but left in 1934 to study with Roger Sessions in New York City. In 1935 Diamond's Sinfonietta won the Elfrida Whiteman Scholarship. (He remembers George Gershwin, one of the judges of the competition, smoking his ever-present cigar, putting his arm around him and asking, "Where'd you ever learn to orchestrate like that, kid?") That same year he began a life-long friendship with Aaron Copland, who offered guidance and support to the young composer In the next three decades Diamond would write eleven string quartets and win numerous awards, including three Guggenheim Fellowships, a Prix de Rome, a gold medal from both the MacDowell Colony and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a Presidential Medal of the Arts presented at the White House in 1995. His eleven symphonies were premiered by the following conductors: Mitropoulos, Koussevitzky Munch, Bernstein, Ormandy, Masur and Schwarz, the last-named now in the process of recording the entire cycle with the Seattle Symphony.
The following interview was conducted by Alex Jeschke, a long-time friend, with the 86-yeor-old composer at his home in Rochester, New York on Sunday June 24, 2001.
Alex Jeschke: The Concerto for String Quartet was written in 1936. Did you compose it when you started studying with Nadia Boulanger?
David Diamond: No, I actually began composing it before I began to study with her. It was the result of my meeting with the composer Albert Roussel for the first time. I was introduced to him by a superb violinist who had a quartet in Paris called the Hewlitt Quartet, and it was he who said, "I would like you to meet Albert Roussel because he has already asked me about you" (Koussevitzky had told him about me), so he took me to this beautiful apartment that he had with his wife, so that's how I met him.
AJ: What made you decide to write a "Concerto"?
DD: I had always admired the performers of a string quartet because they had to be perfect musicians, technically and interpretively. They were, for me, the peak, even more so than a conductor. Also, at that time in Paris, I was listening to a cycle of the Beethoven quartets which the Lener; a Hungarian quartet [Jenö Lener and Lawrence Steinhardt, violins; Ralph Hersh, viola; and Gabor Retjö, cello], was playing. So, with Boulanger's analysis and with these remarkable performances, I really got to know them very well.
AJ: Why did you dedicate the work to Albert Roussel?
DD: I dedicated the work to Roussel because he had done so much; that very summer he gave me letters to meet Charles Munch, the conductor (I showed him my Psalm for orchestra and he was very impressed with that). I also met other important musicians such as Florent Schmitt and Arthur Honegger, all of those who had come for the Exposition year in 1937.
AJ: You had just turned 21 that summer. What impressed Roussel most about the piece?
DD: First of all, he was fascinated by the way I had notated it. I had it on the usual four staves, but, I thought, since this is a concerto, and each movement is going to give one of the instruments of the quartet solo prominence accompanied by the three others, I thought it would be a good idea to have the score with larger notes for the solo parts and, indeed, it was engraved that way as one sees it today.
AJ: Were you in Paris when he died?
DD: Yes, I was there in 1937 when Roussel died in August. It was a bad year for French music because then Ravel died in December.
AJ: Most people will be hearing this early work for the first time. Is there anything that an average music lover should listen for in order to increase his appreciation of this sophisticated form of chamber music?
DD: Well, all I can say is what I've said all my life. Listen to it over and over again because a quartet is made of four independent, contrapuntal lines that relate to each other thematically motivically and so forth. The Beethoven quartets must be listened to over and over again before you can know, really, what they're all about. And I think it's the same for my quartets: they are involved contrapuntally; several have fugues; but, in general, the texture is contrapuntal, as is most of my music.
AJ: Your Third Quartet was written shortly after the end of World War II while you were living in New York City. What were the circumstances of its composition?
DD: It's a sad story in many ways. The young woman I was living with, a fabulous painter by the name of Allela Cornell, became depressed while I was conducting performances of my music for Margaret Webster's production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. When I got home one night, I saw them bringing a stretcher down from the loft that we shared at 544 Hudson Street in Manhattan, and, of course, the moment I got near the ambulance, they said they were taking her to St. Vincent's. So I immediately ran over to the hospital which was diagonally across 7th Avenue, and when I got there, she was in the Diagnostic Room. She had a friend who was a photographer and who had hydrochloric acid in the woodshed for developing her film, and Allela in her depression had gone out there and drunk almost half a bottle of the acid, and for one whole year she was a dying wraith; she weighed twenty-four pounds on the last day of her life. And yet she was drawing in bed at St.Vincent's, drawings which I have with me still.
AJ: Do you believe that what is happening to a composer greatly affects the notes he puts on paper, because this is certainly one of your most personal works?
DD: I can't see how it would not be so. If we don't react to other human beings, we're not very human. I would say I am basically a garrulous person; I love conversation, and I know a good deal about the Arts and politics; I'm a well-rounded person; my family was such, to be sure, that they made me so.
AJ: When did Leonard Bernstein first hear this work?
DD: Lenny came to the first reading in the loft I had with Allela. I invited a few close friends, and Lenny said that I could use four string players from the New York City Center where he was then the conductor. I remember Werner Leywen was the first violinist, and he was the concertmaster of that orchestra that Lenny conducted for two years. It was more than a reading; it was as though they really knew the work. It was one of those pleasant evenings in The Village in the mid-40's. I was writing a lot of music that was occasional music, but it was also music that I had to write because I intellectually wanted to.
AJ: Why did Bernstein praise the fourth movement in particular?
DD: Well, the last movement has a strange kind of story I find difficult to talk about because it's still so close to me. After Allela died, I wanted to write a work in her memory. It was a year after she died, and I was sitting at my Steinway and the light became very peculiar outside; it was as though a storm were brewing. The clouds were all dark and swept right by making the room very dark, so I put on just the left-side lamp so that I could continue working. I don't know what it is, but I have had supernatural experiences, which I don't like to talk about, but my analyst and psychiatrist that I spoke to years later about it said that they felt I was absolutely sincere about it, but my kind of supersensitivity would make me very aware of things. But as I was working on the last movement, the sudden change into the Adagio, which ends the work was being dictated by Allela who, I sensed, was very close to me. I could feel her near me, and so I began to write. I think this quartet is known, perhaps more than the others, because of that last Adagio movement. People are very moved by it. (Diamond won the New York Music Critics' Circle Award for this work.)
AJ: Almost twenty years separate the Third from the Eighth Quartet. Since you had been living in Europe for some time, did the twelve-tone system affect your style in any way?
DD: Oh, I would say as much as almost anybody who was sensitive to what was going on in contemporary music. I had met Arnold Schoenberg when he came to NewYork in, I think it was, early 1935. I believe I went to see him at the Dakota hotel where he was staying. I told him that I wanted very much to study with him, particularly counterpoint. He had seen some of my music through Roger Sessions, my teacher; who was a great friend of his; but he said, "Oh, my dear young man, I am going to Boston to teach because the weather in New York and the traffic and the noise is terrible." So I said, "Well, may I come up there, maybe every other week and work with you?" "By all means, do that." But, unfortunately, once he got to Boston, his asthma became even worse; the winter cold was such that he began to have terrible spasms of coughing. So, the doctors suggested that he go to California.
AJ: This work ends with a fugue, as does the Seventh Quartet. Could this highest form of counterpoint have been a reaction against the lack of counterpoint in so many twelve-tone pieces being written at the time?
DD: You know, I never really thought of it from that standpoint. Off-hand, I would say no. To me, to write a fugue is a result of what the materials in the work demand. If there is a melodic contour or a motivic idea that I can transform into what a fugal subject demands for treatment and that can take a real counter subject, then I'll write a fugue; but I just don't stick fugues in because I want to write them.
AJ: This work was finished seven weeks before you completed the Seventh Quartet. Was there a particular reason for this?
DD: If I'm remembering accurately, I had heard that there was a competition for string quartets in Kansas City for a fairly good sum of money, and I thought that I would just send it - as a possibility, since I needed money very badly in those days. I used a pseudonym that most people are amused by, a name that has been a very lucky one for other competitions. And that was "selva oscura", the obscure self, and so the obscure self managed to get me the prize - The Rheta A. Sosland Chamber Music Award.
AJ This work was played by the original Chicago Symphony String Quartet with Frank Miller and Milton Preves in 1975 at your sixtieth birthday concert in that city and then many times by the current group nearly twenty-five years later. Why do you think that it has never been recorded before now?
DD: That's a hard question because recordings depend on the quartet members themselves who are usually connected with a recording company. As with my symphonies, I'm sure that I would never have had so many on Delos records if Mr. Schwarz had not been recording for Delos. Well, I remember the Third Quartet was recorded for a special subscription series called Concert Society Recordings, so it was available for several years if someone wanted to subscribe.
The Potomac String Quartet
The Potomac String Quartet has served as the resident string quartet at the chamber music concerts at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. In October 2000, the quartet embarked on a project of recording all eleven string quartets written between 1936 and 1968 by the eminent American composer David Diamond.
The Musicians of the Potomac String Quartet
Violinist GEORGE MARSH has been a member of the National Symphony Orchestra since 1979. Mr. Marsh has performed as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra, the Catholic University Orchestra, and several other orchestras in his native midwest. As a chamber musician, he is a founding member at the Chamber Artists of Washington; he has also performed with the Vaener String Trio, the New England Piano Quartet, the Washington Chamber Society, and the Alexandria Chamber Ensemble. Recital performances include concerts at the Phillips Collection, the Organization of American States, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Mr. Marsh has received numerous awards, including first prize in the 1985 Washington International Bach Competition. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he studied with Paul Makanowitzky. Mr Marsh can be heard on recordings of the chamber music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, as well as on recordings of music performed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum three volumes of Darkness & Light. Mr. Marsh plays a 1758 J.B. Guadagnini, the "ex Joseph Silverstein".
Violinist SALLY McLAIN received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees with "High Distinction" from Indiana University, where she studied with and was assistant to James Buswell. Raised in Washington DC, Ms. McLain is a graduate of the DC Youth Orchestra Program. She has participated in the Tanglewood Music Center; Bach Aria Festival and Institute and the New York String Orchestra. Ms. McLain performs throughout the Washington DC area as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral musician. Solo engagements have included performances at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater; the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery and Lisner Auditorium. She has performed chamber music on the Embassy Series, with National Musical Arts and the 20th Century Consort. She frequently performs as an orchestral musician with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and served as concertmaster for the Washington Chamber Symphony for ten seasons. Ms. McLain is a member of the Theater Chamber Players, Leon Fleischer Director.
Violinist JENNY OAKS BAKER received her Master's degree from the Juilliard School in New York City. She also earned a Bachelor's degree in violin performance from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Ms. Oaks Baker has given recitals in Israel, Europe, and Asia and has soloed with orchestras throughout the United States, including the Utah Symphony and the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. She has also been a guest soloist with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in their national television and radio broadcast. Recently, she made her Carnegie Hall debut as a featured soloist in the Easter Festival Concert. This past August, Ms. Oaks Baker soloed with the Jerusalem Symphony in a production of Lex de Azevedo's Gloria. Ms. Oaks Baker has been prize winner in several national and international competitions. Additionally, she is the recipient of two Pearl Awards from the Faith Centered Music Association for her solo debut album On Wings of Song. Her subsequent albums, Songs My Mother Taught Me and Where Love Is, also feature hymns and sacred classical works. Ms. Oaks Baker's teachers have included Victor Danchenko, Jaime Laredo and Robert Mann. She is a member of the National Symphony Orchestra.
TSUNA SAKAMOTO, violist in the National Symphony Orchestra was born in Tokyo, Japan. She studied at the Toho-Academy School of Music. Ms. Sakamoto came to the United States where she studied with the renowned violinist Naoko Tanaka at the Aspen Summer Music School. She decided to continue studying violin performance in the United States at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and received her Master's degree from the Ohio State University. While all of her degrees are in violin performance, she always had a passion for the viola. Her love for viola playing blossomed while she was a violinist in the San Antonio Symphony.
STEVEN HONIGBERG, heralded as a "sterling cellist" by the Washington Post, has emerged as one of the outstanding cellists of his generation. Mr. Honigberg gave his New York debut recital in Weill Hall and has since performed to critical acclaim throughout the United States in recital, in chamber music and as a soloist with orchestra. A member of the National Symphony Orchestra, he has been featured numerous times as soloist with that ensemble. He won rave reviews for the 1988 world premiere of David Ott's Concerto for Two Cellos performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Maestro Rostropovich, with repeat performances on the NSO's 1989 & 1994 United States tours. Mr. Honigberg is acclaimed for his
explorations of important new works, such as Lukas Foss' Anne Frank (1999), Benjamin Lees' Night Spectres (1999), Robert Stern's Hozkoroh (1998), Robert Starer's Song of Solitude (1995) & David Diamond's Concert Piece (1993), written for and premiered by Steven Honigberg. Mr Honigberg graduated from the Juilliard School of Music with a Master's degree in Music, where he studied with Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins. Other mentors include Pierre Fournier and Karl Frub. Voted "Best New Chamber Music Series" of I 994 by the Washington Post, Steven Honigberg has been The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's chamber music series director since its inception. Mr Honigberg has an extensive CD recording list, which includes his latest recording of Ernst Toch's cello compositions. Mr Honigberg also has recorded Ludwig van Beethoven's complete works for cello & piano; an album of twentieth-century American cello works; the chamber music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold; and recordings of music performed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - three volumes of Darkness & Light. His recent performances include concerts at the 1998 Ravinia Festival and Weill Hall in NewYork, and a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 in August 2001 with the Sun Valley Festival Orchestra, where he has performed as principal cellist since 1990. Mr Honigberg performs on the "Stuart" Stradivarius cello made in 1732.
For other CD Titles from Steve Honigberg and the musicians of The Potomac String Quartet
please visit www.webcom.com/steveh.
David Diamond String Quartets published by Southern Music Publishing Co. Inc.
Recording Engineer
Antonino D'Urzo
Producer
Steven Honigberg
Editing and mastering
Charlie Pilzer - Airshow, Springfield,VA
Cover Photo
Gloria Hoffman, NYC (1930s)
Cover Design
Tracy Pilzer
Potomac String Quartet:
George Marsh
Violin I
Jenny Oaks Baker
Violin II (No.3 & No.8)
Sally McLain
Violin II (Concerto)
Tsuna Sakamoto
Viola
Steven Honigberg
Cello
Recorded St. Lukes Church, McLean, Virginia - October 2000 & March 2001
ALBANY RECORDS U.S.
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ALBANY RECORDS U.K.
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