Sessions

[mp4...@albnyvms.bitnet]

Sessions is academic, dry and ugly. Promoters etc. have less to
do with what is classically played than do musicians, patrons and
"musical advisors". You will no more get classical music fans to listen
to Sessions than you will get modernist musical fans to understand
why classicists reject modernism.

If you like sessions you are in for luck, his star should be rising
as his pupil Harbison's fame grows. There has been a SFO/Blomstedt
recording of this Sym #2 recently issued. Don't blame promoters or radio
stations, most classical stations are not all that ratings obsessed. If the
music here were pop, perhaps your complaints would be valid. But
quite frankly it is easier for a modernist composer
to get his works premiered than for a non-modernist, it is much easier
to get a comission for a "concerto style" work than it is for a straight
symphonic work (Shades of Paganini's noticing ominous rests in the
viola part of Harold in Italie), and it vastly more likely that
a proto-modernist (or someone who can be played like one eg Reger) than
it is for a neglected classicist (small c as in the era of Haydn/Beethoven/
Schubert) to be rediscovered.

I have heard most of Sessions work at this point, as a classical music
listener it holds littel interest for me, and for most listners like me, this
is the reason that we don't buy it. With the explosion in modernist
muscisians who can't and don't want to play classically styled pieces,
you will get your chance to hear all of the Sessions, Harbison, Babbit &c
that you want.

Margaret-Mary Petit Internet: MP4...@uacsc1.albany.edu
Rockefeller College Bitnet: MP4...@albnyvms.bitnet
SUNY Albany, NY
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[Mario Taboada]

mp4...@albnyvms.bitnet writes:

Dear Margaret: The ways of musical preferences are inscrutable:
just as you find Sessions'music academic, dry, and ugly, I find it lively,
exciting, and beautiful. My first contact with his music was through an
old Louisville LP, during a period when I was mainly interested in
Brahms and Schumann. I was immediately seduced by Sessions' music.

I stand by what I said regarding promotion, fundraising, etc.
Regarding public performances, why would anyone want to listen to
a Brahms symphony for the n-th time (in performances which are getting
more and more trite as everybody reaches saturation) rather than one
of Sessions' pieces, which are challenging to everyone concerned? What I
say about Sessions applies as well to less "controversial" composers
like Martinu or Enesco (or even Stravinsky), whose wonderful music does
not surface in the concert hall (in Stravinsky's case, only a very few
pieces are performed with any frequency at all).

I think we are doing a disservice to music by expecting to
hear the familiar instead of exploring new (or old, but unknown)
works. In the "old but unknown" I would include most of Haydn's
production (and I am talking about the greatest composer here), and
most of Bach's cantatas. Villa Lobos is another clear loser.

Best regards,

Mario Taboada
Los Angeles