On Monday morning, I had the pleasure of addressing attendees at Chamber Music America's New Music Institute, held at New York University's Kimmel Center. Friendly interrogator Richard Kessler and I discussed successful strategies for programming, presentation and promotion of new works. We covered a lot of ground, including multimedia presentations, themed programs and alternative venues. The conversation and Q&A session both completely zipped by, and the mood was decidedly upbeat.
One topic touched upon both during my session and in a terrific conversation with the Ying Quartet that immediately preceded it was the notion of playing a premiere more than once during a single concert. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "Double Exposure" series was held up as a particularly satisfying example, and similar efforts elsewhere were mentioned by performers and presenters in the audience.
I thought about this again this evening when I came upon a pertinent passage in the book I'm currently reading. This section dealt with the first American performance of a new piece by a sophisticated contemporary composer, presented not at one of the major concert halls but at the New School for Social Research. In an innovative bit of programming, the new piece was followed by three pre-Baroque works and a single movement from a contrasting contemporary string quartet Then, "very properly and wisely" according to the reviewer, the first piece was played again -- "as important works should be, whenever possible, at one and the same concert."
The book I'm reading is Olin Downes on Music (Simon & Schuster, 1957), a collection of reviews spanning the years 1906 to 1955. The article in question, dated March 13, 1931, details Downes's very favorable impressions of Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 4, given its American premiere the previous evening by a group called the New World String Quartet.
Following the initial account of the Bartók were arrangements of "a Symphonia by Isaac, a Ricercare of Vecchi, and a Fantasia of Gibbons," according to Downes, after which followed the second movement from Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 3. Then the Bartók was played again. No report sadly, as to how much of the audience remained in place for the second performance.
There are probably even earlier examples of this kind of programming to be found; this one just happened to jump out at me tonight. Sometimes it really does seem that there is nothing new under the sun.
A passage of the review specifically devoted to the Schoenberg piece is also enlightening, if for completely different reasons. I've only read as far as February 1934 in the Downes anthology -- the tantalizing prospect of Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts currently waits under my bookmark! -- and at this point Downes has yet to make any sort of peace with the music of Schoenberg, whom he scrutinized somewhat mercilessly from a psychoanalytical perspective in an earlier essay. (Schoenberg in turn took Downes to task for certain of his more rancorous opinions, and not only those pertaining to himself; see here, for instance.)
But in this case, Downes seems to have suggested, hearing the single section in isolation, and in this context, yielded unanticipated benefits:
Was it the excellent arrangement and contrast of the program's material which made the listener so appreciative? The one movement of a Schoenberg quartet could be listened to with a degree of concentration that it would not have been possible to give the whole work. As a result, the exceptional unity of the movement and the relative conservatism of its polyphonic scheme were doubly manifest, one listener remarking that if she heard that music again she feared she might like it. This apprehension was shared by the writer!
Playlist:
King Crimson - The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA, Nov. 23, 1981 (DGMlive.com download)
Michael Gandolfi - The Garden of Cosmic Speculation - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra/Robert Spano (Telarc, due out Feb. 26)
Anaal Nathrakh - Eschaton (Season of Mist)
Robert Glasper - Canvas (Blue Note)
Brad Mehldau Trio - Day Is Done (Nonesuch)
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska (Columbia)
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