 |
| Roger Sessions and Jean Martinon |
The Russians I met ... were familiar with some American scores, and were especially enthusiastic about those of [Roger] Sessions.
ELLIOTT CARTER [1]
_____________________________________
These days no-one is especially enthusiastic about the symphonies of Roger Sessions. Not even a little enthusiastic. Too abstruse for some, too old-fashioned for others, Sessions' symphonies have been confined for decades to the dark and musty basement of music history where they pass time swapping tales of former glory with the symphonies of Dittersdorf, Spohr, Ries, Onslow, Kalliwoda, Wilms, Reinecke, Rubinstein, and other now almost completely forgotten composers.
I doubt the time will come when Sessions' symphonies, like the prisoners in Fidelio, occasionally will be taken from the dark basement to face the blinding footlights of a concert stage. European orchestras have their own musical resuscitation projects to focus on; and American orchestras, never friendly toward modernist music to begin with, are now so obsessed with 'diversity' and 'relevance' of their programs that a dead white heterosexual male American modernist composer - who had never been blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer, never marched on Selma, and never dedicated a work to the victims of American imperialism - simply has no chance unless he is Elliott Carter (and Carter's works get precious few American performances anyway).
Listening to old live broadcast recordings, then, is as close as we may ever come to knowing what it might be like to hear a Sessions symphony in a concert hall. Fortunately some of these live broadcasts are very good (both as performances and as sound engineering), and none are better than those documenting the mid-1960s performance of Sessions symphonies by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under its then music director Jean Martinon. Martinon's 1967 performance of Seventh Symphony has been available in this blog for quite some time. Here I add his performance of Third Symphony recorded in concert on 25 November 1965.[2]
____________________________
1. Reporting from the 1962 Warsaw Autumn Festival, Collected Essays and Lectures 1937-1995, U. of Rochester Press, p.38.
2. A stereo FM broadcast of this performance was originally recorded on reel-to-reel tape and later transferred to FLAC by David Royko (I hope I remember the name of this generous music lover correctly).
For those who may want more information about Sessions' Third Symphony than what is usually provided in an LP jacket notes or a CD booklet, here is a PDF copy of a 1995 M.M. Thesis from Rice University which discusses this symphony in considerable detail.
7 comments:
!!! Thanks.
Thank you for these Sessions performances by the CSO under (in my opinion) its greatest conductor, Jean Martinon. If anyone can make the case for his symphonies (which I know only from CRI's compendium of performances), it is him. After the Reiner years, Martinon deeply disturbed the city's power elites. I know Claudia Cassidy ran an unrelenting and eventually successful one-woman vendetta against him. Speaking of Martinon during his Windy City days, could you post his performance of Carl Ruggles' "Sun Treader." I have been dying to hear it for years but have never been able to find it anywhere.
David,
Regrettably I do not have Martinon's performance of the Ruggles piece you mention.
I do recall that it was issued commercially by the Chicago SO in their "From The Archives" set of CDs, which included a 2CD set of Martinon concert recordings.
Alas, the set you mention is out of print. So I can only hope some kind soul will post it.
Just as Morton Feldman can be said to be an American-born child of Anton Webern, Roger Sessions can be said to be his American Schoenberg-counterpart. It is extraordinary to me how much Sessions sound-world and orchestration (oh! those high-pitched, high-drama strings) remind me of Schoenberg. In any case, Jean Martinon's performance of Sessions' 3rd is probably everything the composer could have hoped in terms of conductor understanding and ensemble playing. Chicago permitted Martinon to be the daring and visionary conductor no other orchestra permitted him to be. By the way, I love the jazzy ending to the 3rd. Martinon makes sure it swings. The audience sounds like it didn't know what hit it. Talk about tepid response. I'm off to hear the 7th. But I just had to thank you for these shares. You're right to remind us of Sessions' importance.
David,
I am glad you enjoyed this performance of the Sessions 3rd. I think that Martinon's being a composer himself (and one of quality in my opinion) made him a more perceptive conductor of contemporary music than many of his non-composing colleagues.
I found the last portion of the last movement of Sessions' 7th Symphony exceptionally lyrical and deeply felt. Wow! This broadcast is the closest I'll ever get to hearing this wonderful work live. More gratitude! You've made this day one of discovery. By the way, I've been meaning to ask you to address Dane Rudhyar and what I call the "Cult of Dissonance." The members of the cult--Rudhyar, Ruggles, Seeger and Cowell--are worth your very astute and articulate attention. I recently heard Rudhyar's "Sinfonietta" and it was, as the composer intended, a spiritual experience.
Post a Comment