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Trio for Violin, Cello & Piano
Quintet for Flute, B-Flat Clarinet, Violin, Cello & Piano
George Rochberg was born in Patterson, New Jersey, on July 5, 1918. He studied composition at the Mannes School of Music in New York from 1939 to 1942 with Hans Weisse, George Szell and Leopold Mannes. During World War II Rochberg served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the infantry in Europe. About this period in his life he says: "The war years were much more than an interruption in my musical studies. They taught me what art really meant because I learned what life really meant. The war shaped my psyche and precipitated my internal development. I came to grips with my own time. I came to the necessity of the twelve-tone method independently of the few other American composers who turned to it after the war."
After his discharge from the army in the summer of 1945, he continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Rosario Scalero. He was a member of the faculty at Curtis Institute from 1948 to 1954. In 1950, the composer was both a Fulbright Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. It was in Italy that Rochberg turned to the twelve-tone method, but in our age of constant change and search, he has continued to probe the musical problems of our time. His compositions since 1965 indicate that he is moving in new directions, expanding his language so that he can, as he says, "embrace the past as well as the future." He seems no longer content with exclusive methods of composition and is striving for greater and greater inclusivity and flexibility of gesture and sound.
Mr. Rochberg has written the following about his Trio:
"The first performance of the Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano was given in Buffalo, New York (while I was Slee Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo) in the spring of 1964 by the Nieuw Amsterdam Trio for whom it was written. It was my last work in the 12-tone method and still bears, for me, the marks of my struggle to transform the abstract palette of ordered chromaticism into something more than mere pattern and design.
"It is one continuous movement which is articulated structurally by an essential soloist/ensemble dichotomy. Each instrument, therefore, has its own level of solo activity. Beyond that there are "duos" and "trios"; so in a sense the "conversation" between the three instruments is open and dynamic. Only at the very end of the work do they combine to produce one single gesture.
"As in all my music and my 12-tone works in particular I tried in the Trio to discover a "harmony" special to the conditions of that work which would unify the sounds around a basic aural concept whether that concept is analyzable or not and produce, as a result, an identifiable, definable musical substance."
The list of awards he has received indicates widespread recognition of his extraordinary talent: in 1952, the George Gershwin Memorial Award for Night Music; in 1956, the Society for the Publication of American Music Award for String Quartet No. 1; in 1957, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission and two Guggenheim Fellowships. The Cheltenham Concerto was awarded the first prize in the chamber orchestra category of the Italian ISCM International Competition in 1959. The coveted Naumburg Recording Award went to his Symphony No. 2 in 1961, and he received a National Institute of Arts and Letters Grant in 1962. He is also the recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission. In 1972 he received the Naumburg Chamber Composition Award for his Third String Quartet.
The composer and conductor, Roque Cordero, was born in Panama in 1917. He studied composition with Ernst Krenek and conducting with Dimitri Mitropoulos, Stanley Chapple and Leon Barzin.
Through the years he has distinguished himself in music as Professor of Composition at the National Institute of Music in Panama (1950-1966), Director of the National Institute of Music (1953-1964), Conductor of the National Orchestra of Panama (1964-1966), Assistant Director of the Latin American Music Center and Professor of Composition at Indiana University (1966-1969), and Music Consultant for Peer International Corporation and Southern Music Publishing Company, Inc. (1966-1972). He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Illinois State University.
Roque Cordero's First Symphony received honorable mention in the Reichhold Music Contest in Detroit, 1947; his Rapsodia Campesina was awarded first prize in the Ricardo Miro Contest held in Panama in 1953; and his Second Symphony won the "Caro do Boesi" prize in the Second Inter-American Music Festival,
Caracas, 1957. He was also awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Music in 1949.
As Guest Conductor with the Bogota Symphony Orchestra, the National Television Orchestra of Colombia, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Chile, the Municipal Theater Orchestra of Rio de Janeiro, and in the First International Festival of Buenos Aires, Mr. Cordero has enjoyed great success.
The Quintet for flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano, by Roque Cordero, was written in Minnesota in December of 1949, while the composer was on a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work. The second and fourth movements were performed at Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota, in May of 1950, but the world premiere of the complete work took place later in Montevideo, Uruguay, on September 25, 1957. You will note that the last movement of the Quintet brings back subjects from previous movements, a characteristic of Cordero's works of several movements.
Robert Palmer was born on June 2, 1915 in Syracuse, New York. He studied at the Eastman School, with both Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson, and was also helped on his way by Aaron Copland, from whom he took private lessons (as he did also from Roy Harris). After teaching at the University of Kansas for three years, he joined the music faculty of Cornell University.
Notable among his works are a symphony, a Poem for violin and chamber orchestra, a symphonic elegy for Thomas Wolfe, a Concerto for Orchestra, Concerto for Small Orchestra, the Variations, Chorale and Fugue for orchestra, a Chamber Concerto for violin, oboe and strings, several chamber works, music for the ballet, and the choral works Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, The Trojan Women and Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount.
The Quintet for Clarinet, Strings and Piano was composed in 1952 on commission from the Quincy (Illinois) Society of Fine Arts. In its original form the work comprised only three movements, but Palmer came to feel that a scherzo was called for between the first and second movements, and he added it in 1963. The premiere of the four-movement version was given in New York the same year, with David Glazer playing the clarinet. The composer has kindly provided the following notes on the work:
"The first movement is expansive and flowing in character, with an opening statement of unusual length. The moderate pace of the opening gradually increases by a subdivision of the beat with the second idea. From here the motion increases again and the texture becomes richer until the climactic point where there is a series of cadenzas. After a very quiet retransition the opening idea returns, leading to a short coda. The movement ends on a dissonant and disturbing version of the opening sonority.
"The second movement is a scherzo in which the convention of fast triple meter is used as a point of departure for stretching the metrical convention to its limits. The 'limits' become meaningful in this case precisely because of the use of the convention of the meter as a context for meaning. The middle section is alternately sombre and light-hearted in mood. The breathless scherzo returns. The ending is fanciful.
"The slow movement is lyrical and contrapuntal. The theme is built on the ascending minor ninth which then descends in a winding motion. The movement is constructed partly as a series of canons at various intervals, some creating rather astringent counterpoints. It is also a study in textures, with the richest at the end an interlocked doubling of the two-voiced canon in the clarinet and strings, with the piano playing a rhythmic idea from the early part of the movement in the outer registers.
"The finale is essentially a dance movement. Like the finale of the Piano Quartet, to which it is somewhat related, it utilizes melodic and rhythmic idioms of American popular and folk music but 'sublimated' and transformed rather than quoted directly. The composer's spiritual kinship with the music of Harris, Copland, and Ives is evident. Despite considerable elaborateness of texture, the effect of the movement is one of great forward momentum, with a contrast of dynamic and lyrical elements. In addition to the themes, small motives play a unifying role."
Digitally remastered by Malcolm Addey.
Trio for Violin, Cello & Piano (18:38)
Kees Kooper, violin · Fred Sherry, cello · Mary Louise Boehm, piano
Quintet for Flute, B-Flat Clarinet, Violin, Cello & Piano
I. Vivace e con spirito (5:40)
III. Allegro molto (3:01)
IV. Largo Allegro molto (7:31)
John Wion, flute · Arthur Bloom, clarinet · Kees Kooper, violin
Fred Sherry, cello · Mary Louise Boehm, piano
Quintet for A-Clarinet, String Trio & Piano
I. Poco lento ma con moto (9:04)
III. Andante grazioso (5:29)
Arthur Bloom, clarinet · Kees Kooper, violin · Paul Doktor, viola
Warren Lash, cello · Mary Louise Boehm, piano
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