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 Fred Calland Interview Transcript November, 1980 American Music Fred Calland, NPR: But so much of... how often have you been asked, 'Is there such a thing as an American music?' Aaron Copland: Is there such a thing? FC: Yeah. You've been asked that often I'm sure. What do you do? Just sort of sweat and say change the subject? AC: I say, by now I hope so! I think for certain that some of the Ives pieces could only have been written by an American. Some of the songs. That was really when I got the first impression of the extent of the man's gift when he sent me that volume of songs. And it was particularly the variety of songs that's even so amazing. Every kind of song. Good, bad, and then different. Somebody would think, why on earth would he want to publish this, especially at his own expense? Who needs it? Junk! (laughs) And then there's some songs that are practically unsingable, they're so long and they're so hard, they go so high and so low. No human voice could handle them. FC: Tell me one thing, I've always really wanted to hear you talk about, because I of course don't remember, but it seems to me, if half of what I read is true. The 1920's, you know the post-war era, was probably very exciting, particularly… well, Ansermet(?), for example, wrote this great article on American jazz and its potential, and its possibility, and its energy. And of course it did spread around the world. And yet I don't gather that that was a huge generating force for you as a composer. Am I mistaken? AC: Jazz, you mean? I wouldn't have thought of it as a generating force. That really gives it a big name. No, but it was a way, and that's what it attracted me to it, of writing a recognizably American music. It solved the problem of being nationalistic, up to a point, in your music. You see, I was very aware of how French the French music seemed in those days. And looking for an American idiom, naturally, it was a help to know that it had been created in a field that I considered light music. Very attractively the whole world recognized it as American, so it must've been American. And so the idea came into my head, well, I'd love to be able to do that in the field of serious, so-called serious, concert music. FC: Where have you ... Where do you feel you've done it best? AC: Oh gosh... FC: I say the Piano Concerto and then of course the Piano Blues. AC: Yeah, I'd say the same. I think that some parts of the Piano Variations, for instance, which not everybody might recognize as that of an American composer, I think also to have ... would have been different if I wasn't familiar with jazz rhythms and jazz feelings. Nobody would call the variations jazzy, I don't think. It was a help to know that somebody had, some composers, had developed a style, even though it was only in light music, that the whole world could recognize that that must be American popular music. That was a stimulus. FC: Does it make you feel like some sort of patriarch that people don't ask that question much anymore. They'll say, 'What's American music?' They say, 'Well, Aaron Copland's American music.' And it's true, isn't it? AC: I hope so. (pause) Well the result is of course that the younger generation of composers are not at all interested in being American sounding in their music. They have a thing 'well, it's been done. Who needs it?' FC: Do you have great affection for the younger generation of American composers. AC: I? Well, in principle I do. I wouldn't want to be pinned down to examples, but it'd be a sad world if you couldn't believe in what the younger generation were up to. FC: Alright, since you are about to achieve the grand old age of, what is it, 80? Are you gonna be 80? AC: I'm afraid so. Next week to be exact. It's been threatening me for some years, and it's awful to think it's next year ... next week! Freudian slip, I said, 'next year.' FC: Yeah, but the... What do you ... What have you missed. (Copland laughs) What would you have done ... No, come on ... What would you have done if, well if you had another 80 years. AC: You mean musically what have I missed. FC: Yeah. AC: Gee, no one's ever asked me that. I've never thought about it. It seems like a useless thing to think about since you're not going to have another 80 years! What have I missed? It would have been nice to have written a really, a grand opera in the grand manner. I wrote an opera in three acts, but it's lyrical, it's sort of opera lyrique. That would've been fun. Good chorus, and you know, ambitious. Nice to sing ... FC: What kind of a story or libretto would someone have had to come up with to set that a fire. AC: I don't know. Something American? Opening of the country? I don't know. (laughs) FC: Do you compose? Do you think about composing? I'm sure you think about music a lot, don't you? AC: Well, I live the life of a musician, basically. (pause) But, if you've had 50 or 60 years in which you express yourself, that's a pretty long time. and you don't really think, gee, isn't it awful that I'm not composing anymore. You kind of feel lucky you had the 50 or 60 years and let it go at that! Rest easy! That's more or less the way I feel, since it's useless anyhow to sit around moaning about the fact that you're not producing anymore. (pause) I think most composers have never lived to my great age, or they never had to think how you, worry about how you go on after 55 or 60. Poor devils. Appalachian Spring FC: Speaking of your children, you cannot say that the music for the "Appalachian Spring" is in any way neglected at all ... How do you feel about this music so many years now after it's been... AC: I feel very good, as a matter of fact. The fate of pieces is really rather curious. You don't always figure out in advance ... what exactly is going to happen to them. FC: As a boy, I came from Upper Appalachia. AC: Did you? What is Upper Appalachia? FC: Oh ... Southern Ohio, the foothills of the Appalachian. AC: I see. FC: And I recall distinctly, it was about WW II, hearing the Appalachian Spring for the first time. It was a big album of records; I think it was Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony. AC: Very possible, yeah. FC: And, I thought to myself, 'That doesn't sound anymore like Appalachia in my mind than the man in the moon!' (FC and AC laugh) ... But you know there is an entire generation of Americans who, when they hear that music, think of the Appalachian region. You have given voice to that region. AC: Could be. Could be. Don't forget I gave voice to that region without knowing that I was giving a voice to it, since I didn't know what it was going to be called, and I was not thinking of the Appalachian mountains when I wrote it. (Copland laughs) People are very disappointed to hear me say that. They like to think that I sat down, knowing what the piece was going to be called. And I was putting the Appalachians into musical terms. FC: But you have, and no one has done it more beautifully. Conducting FC: Are you a pianist, or a composer or a conductor? You seem to do all of them. AC: Can't you be all? FC: Apparently, you can. AC: (laughs) I'm a latecomer as a conductor. I would've started much earlier than I did, but my great friend Serge Koussevitzky, then head of the Boston Symphony, used to shake his finger at me and say 'You must not waste your time conducting. You must stay home and compose.' And that was probably very good advice. But as soon as he died I started to conduct. It was sort of a supressed passion. After all, if you've sat in an audience or rehearsals as often as I have watching other people conduct your music, you may think, 'I'll never do it as well as he does,' but still there is sort of ... If you just get up there once, and conduct it the way you'd think you dreamt it in the beginning, and it is a great satisfaction after you get sufficient confidence as a conductor, technical confidence... It is a great satisfaction to conduct your own music, I find. In spite of the fact that I might agree with someone, that someone else will do it better than I can... Leonard Bernstein, for instance, who knows my music backwards and forwards. FC: 'Course he's been in on so much of, so many of these compositions, has he not? AC: Yes, that's true. FC: Why would Koussevitzky warn you away from conducting? AC: Well, it is a time consuming affair. You don't just get up and conduct an orchestra. You have to ... After you feel competent ... you can't just go around picking orchestras ... they have to pick you. So, it's a sort of a serious distraction for a composer to attempt to do too much conducting while he's trying to write music. I think he was right to have sort of held me back. But it was a supressed passion and after he died, I started to conduct. FC: I just can't imagine what it would be like. Did you learn ... to be like ... to conduct... AC: Oh, to conduct... FC: Your own works. Did you learn things about your children that you didn't know? AC: Well, you learn a lot by sitting in a rehearsal room and watching a conductor conduct it. And if you've seen 10 different conductors conduct the same piece, you get different versions and different ideas of what the piece might sound like. All that's very helpful when you get up to do it in the way you think you dreamt it in the very beginning. And it is, the orchestra is really first class, and the audience is receptive. It's a very ... It's a real pleasure to be able to do both as a performer and as a composer on the same evening before a receptive audience. The Copland Sound FC: Tell me. When I say the Copland sound, do you know what I'm talking about? AC: Well, I probably have more sounds in my head than just a Copland sound. So in that sense, it's more confusing. I can't... I could tell you whether a piece had reminded... that someone else had written, had spots that reminded me of my own music. That I could tell you. But... FC: How would you spot it? AC: I don't know. I just ... it's a matter of empathy, and just sort of matter of recognition. I can't describe it to you. But I think it's a little dangerous for a composer to become too conscious of what his particular sound is, because then he'll be producing nothing but his sound. It should be more spontaneous than that. You write something, the ... this is great! And then somebody says, 'Oh it sounds just like you!' Lincoln Portrait FC: Was there any precept for the Lincoln Portrait? AC: What do you mean? You mean some example? FC: Well, I know of no other staple serious concert work of that nature. AC: Really? FC: None comes to mind right now. AC: Not immediately, but there must be something. You mean a speaker with orchestra. FC: It just seems to me that it came right fresh… AC: I was just wondering if I could name another example right off the top of my head. Nothing immediately jumps to mind. (long pause) I remember thinking at the time I decided to use a text, I also had other possible writers, or speech-makers, but I no longer remember exactly who they were. And how I ended up by deciding to do "Lincoln" ... I also don't quite remember, except that I think, it comes to me now that I was reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln by an English lord, a Lord Charnwood. I picked it up someplace at a railroad station, in a paperback. And I got some of the things quoted in my Lincoln Portrait from that book. He quoted Lincoln as having said such and such in a speech someplace ... out in, lost in the Midwest. So that was a lucky chance, my having found that book. I thought it was so odd for an English lord to want to write an autobiography, biography rather, of Lincoln. Musical Ideals FC: Why would someone pick a program consisting of the Copland Short Symphony, the Copland 8 Poems of Emily Dickinson, the Copland Old American Songs, and the Copland Tender Land Suite and the Copland Lincoln Portrait? AC: You mean why would I choose such a program? Well, I probably have different reasons for each piece. Normally, when I'm asked to prepare a program of my own works, I naturally am inclined to list those works which are not played so much, you see. The ones that get played, you begin to sort of take for granted. But, you begin to get very sensitive about the other works you've written which don't have such wide appeal, I assume, and so one likes to see to it that they also get performed from time to time. FC: And these five selections are all very close to vocal music, aren't they, with the exception of Short Symphony. AC: I don't think I had that in mind when I chose them, but you're quite right they are except the Short Symphony, and the Lincoln Portrait of course has a voice, a speaking voice, not a singing voice ... but the others were connected with songs, isn't that odd, or opera in the case of The Tender Land. FC: It's the Copland lyrical voices to be heard on this program primarily, wouldn't you say? AC: I suppose that would be true. I can't say that I thought in those terms when I chose it, however. FC: Now, when we say the Short Symphony, where does that fit in with the three symphonies? AC: Well, the Short Symphony is a particular favorite of mine among the symphonies just because it doesn't get played very much. When it was brand new, I think it was really quite technically difficult for an orchestra ... the rhythms were unusual I think, unconventional certainly, and not easy to immediately toss off by even a good professional orchestra. So that it remains one of my pieces which I think is one of the best things I've written and is probably least played of most of my works. And of course every composer feels most tender about those works which are not played so much. The ones that are played a great deal, the composer tends to take for granted. I mean why wouldn't they play it, you know? FC: What other works fall into that category? AC: Not so many ... Well, of course, ones opera doesn't get performed that much. I wrote an opera called The Tender Land, in three acts. It's meant to be a proper opera, not for the Met, but for a lyric theatre with more modest pretensions. And, I can't say it's been a wild hit. FC: And yet, I expect that, what is it? The quintet, The Promise of Life, will probably be around ... AC: The Promise of Living. Yes. FC: The Promise of Living will probably be around as long as anyone's listening to music, don't you imagine? AC: Well, I hope you're right. I don't think the libretto that I used was that fascinating from a theatrical standpoint. The fellow who wrote it was a friend of mine. I thought it would be easy to work with him. I could ask him to change things, and I wouldn't be upset, that kind of thing ... But, he wasn't a real pro, and considering that he wasn't, I think he got away with quite a lot. But, I noticed that it has been taken on not by the big opera companies, which it wasn't really designed for, but in more modest opera activities and universities and places like that. FC: This sounds terribly simple minded of me to say this, but I was, just this season, I listened to a very big production from San Francisco of Samson and Delilah. And then, oh, I later had occasion to hear a taping of Chadwick's Judith. Both of them, huge big subjects on biblical things. And I kept thinking why in the sam hill don't we have an Aaron Copland epical drama like that? You could ... Why don't you get really busy on that? You could do it marvelously! AC: (laughs) Why didn't you come around 20 years ago and suggest that? You really want me to do things that are tough to do. FC: Well, yeah, but it seems that we're missing that in our vocabulary, if I may say so... AC: And by that you mean? FC: A large work with the Copland sound, and the personality there. Paris, Prokofiev, and Nadia Boulanger FC: Can we talk about Paris? Because to me, and I get very emotional when I think about this... Someone like Nadia Boulanger, I really can't grasp. AC: Really? Why not? FC: I can't grasp how her mind worked. She turned out so many students, who ... and yet none of them sound like a pupil of Nadia Boulanger or anyone else. They all sound like original, natural people. How did she accomplish that? AC: Well, she knew how to look at a page of music, or even a half a page of music dispassionately. And to judge it in terms of what that particular student sitting next to her was able to accomplish. She could sort of guess for you, not one way the piece might be developed, but three different ways or four different ways without telling you what to do. So that she was both very sure in her musical reactions about what she thought and how she judged things. You had the confidence in her that if she thinks, saw something was not really right for a certain spot in a piece, it really couldn't have been really right. One trusted her musical instincts completely. I think most of her students would agree with that statement. So that she brought a very wide knowledge of music to her judgement. She knew the oldest music and the latest music. Not all teachers could do that. I had a good teacher in New York who had no connection really with the music of his own time ... Rubin Goldmark. To me, that was a great lack in him, and that was not at all true with Nadia. She was completely at home, either with 18th century or with the 20th century. One can be pretty sure when she thought there was something the matter with a piece and could tell you in detail what it was, that she was right. Very rare for me to think that this time she was wrong. That kind of security in her reaction, not to a finished piece, but a piece in the course of being made, was very, very special I think. I didn't get any of that from Rubin Goldmark. He could judge what you brought in, but he wouldn't be able to tell you how to go on or what to do in relation to it. FC: Yes, it doesn't seem to make sense how she could have that fecundity. How she could see music of all those periods, and yet she was also... AC: She came from a very musical family, you know. Both her father was a professor at the conservatoire and her younger sister Lili of course was the first French woman in French history to win the famous Prix de Rome, and everyone became aware of her through that. FC: Well, but to have, let me see… Some of your classmates would have been Roy Harris, would it not? How 'bout William Schuman? AC: No, he was younger, 10 years younger. I don't think he ever studied with Nadia. FC: Oh. But there are others, who are known now ... AC: Well, Virgil was very much of a student ... and there were numbers of others who didn't sort of become well known later. FC: But she would also have taken performers. Many people say they got… AC: Singers and songs of Fauré especially, Debussy, Ravel… FC: What did you write for her? For example? AC: Primarily, I wrote my Symphony for Organ and Orchestra which was the first orchestral work I heard in performance. She was a greatly admired by Walter Damrosch, and also by Koussevitzky, and when Koussevitzky ... She was first one who brought me to Koussevitzky ... for years after that every time I met him ... I didn't meet him that often, but in a public occasion ... he would say 'You understood what I meant by that remark, didn't you?' He seemed to have had second thoughts about... FC:Did you at the time? AC: Did I have? FC: Yeah, at the time did you feel hurt? AC: No, I laughed with the rest of them. FC: Yeah, I think that is ... AC: After all, he was not a man that ... His (Damrosch) Stravinsky was Wagner so everything that happened in the 20s seemed to him far-out, and exaggerated, and the musical language he didn't really feel for ... he took it because he admired Boulanger ... If I had sent that piece to him, there wouldn't have been a chance that he would perform it, but if she wanted to play the organ part he was willing to go along. FC: Tell me, in recollection ... How did he conduct it? AC: Adequately. Not more. Koussevitzky worked on it harder and really conducted it as if he believed in it. FC: Well, then in addition to you, we could almost say that Koussevitzky also greatly assisted in bringing many, many young composers to the American mind. How about Prokofiev. He was an acquaintance of Koussevitzky's, was he not? AC: Oh, very much so. FC: Did you ever meet him? AC: Prokofiev? Oh yeah, numbers of times. He was living in Paris then. And I distinctly remember, actually there was a little piece in the paper about it just the other day… I remember going to Koussevitzky's in order to play him a section from a ballet I was working on, I was hoping that he'd say, 'Well, make a suite for us and we'll play it in Boston.' He'd just been named conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Well, when I got there, to my horror, there was Prokofiev visiting Koussevitzky. So, when I sat down to play the thing for Koussevitzky, Prokofiev was standing right behind me and it made me sort of self conscious to have a composer who'd be very critical as a composer would of music of some young American he'd never heard of. So, I played it, and as soon as I got to the end, before Koussevitzky or I could say anything, he said in French 'too many bassi ostinati' ... I could've murdered him! (laughs) FC: What did he mean by bassi ostinati? You mean the left hand? Too much ... AC: It's an obstinate bass. It does the same thing all the time… bum bum bum and-a bum bum bum… FC: You mean Prokofiev had the nerve to criticize you for that? AC: Yes, well I was a student after all in those days. Nobody had ever heard of me, so he didn't feel he was doing anything awful. But he was prejudicing my case with Koussevitzky, who I wanted to have play this in Boston when he got there… FC: Well, did you have other perhaps more fortunate experiences with Prokofiev? What was he like? Did you know him much? AC: Oh yeah, well I didn't know him much, but I met him on several occasions. He was very lively ... he was sort of a bad-boy type. He loved saying things that he knew would upset somebody. He wasn't kind. I wouldn't think of him as kind, exactly, but he was very sharp, and what he said was generally had some point to it. And he was right about my piece… FC: You might say you had some very good critical input during those days AC: Yes. FC: But I can't get over Boulanger. Did she take many people, really under her wing like that and say, look here is a conductor, or did she have a special affection for you? AC: That I wouldn't really know. But if she believes in somebody, she was perfectly capable of doing that. After all when I studied with her, I don't think she had that many American students. She must've had some. You see, I first heard of her. In the books now, they say I went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. Once a thing like that gets printed, everybody else who writes a book copies it ... you never can correct it. You can never catch up with it. The fact is when I went to Paris, I had never heard of Nadia Boulanger. I couldn't possibly have got to study with someone I'd never heard of. But, I met her. You see, I was sort of scared of going to France all alone, not knowing anybody there ... though I wanted to study in Paris because that's where the action seemed to be: Stravinsky was living there and the whole new group of six with Poulenc and Milhaud and so forth were all there. So, that seemed to be the exciting place to go. The older generation than mine all had gone to Germany to study, but Germany was rather looked down upon. The war had just finished in '18, and this was '21 ... and the new music seemed to be coming from Paris and Stravinsky was living in Paris, that was a big draw. So I headed for Paris. And as I say, the books say I went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, but that is absolutely not true. I never heard of her, so I couldn't possibly have gone to study with someone I'd never heard of. But I was sort of scared to go to Paris all by myself not knowing a living soul there. And one day I read in the Musical America magazine that the French government, as a gesture of appreciation to the Americans for having helped them in the first World War, was starting a summer music school for American music students in the palace of Fontainebleu ... Well, I thought I won't be alone if I go into that school. I may not learn anything. Who cares? It's just for two months anyhow, but it'll be a way of not being alone in France. So I got to the New York office to sign up so fast, they said, 'You're the first student to join this school.' And it served that purpose. It was very good cuz I wasn't lonely. I was with a bunch of fellow Americans. I had a chance to practice my French for two months, such as it was. And I was turned over to the top composition teacher at the Conservatoire who was teaching this two-month course. Well he was an old doo-doo, he didn't have anything for me at all. He was very conventional in his ideas, and he thought Stravinsky was a madman. That wasn't at all the idea of going to France to study with anyone like that. But some gal, who sat next to me at the lunch table everyday, started enthusing to me about a harmony teacher ... called Nadia Boulanger. And she said, 'You really ought to go and visit her class.' I said, 'I am not interested in harmony. I've had three years of harmony. I don't wanna hear about harmony!' She said, 'Oh, no no. Just go and see the way she does it.' So I went. There was something about the warmth with which she was talking about this dull subject of harmony. All of a sudden, harmony seemed like the whole, the very basis of all the art of music, you know. It took on an aspect that I hadn't really quite grasped that it being so grand. And so very gradually… I was still not a student of hers. See, this was during the two months at the Fontainbleu Music School. And then in the fall we were all going to separate, and I was going to Paris to continue my studies with somebody, I didn't know who, but somebody. Very gradually, I started thinking, 'I would like to study composition with that woman.' But then I hesitated 'cause I couldn't think in the whole history of music of any famous composer who'd ever studied composition with a lady. I thought, 'Am I going to be the first?' (laughs) I talked myself into it. It was the smartest thing I ever did. I can't imagine what my musical career, my career in music would have been like without her. And it was not only lessons and her musical sensitivity that was involved, but when it was announced in the paper that it was Koussevitzky was named the new head of the Boston Symphony, she said to me, 'We must go and visit him.' And sure enough, we went and visited him. And by the time we were ready to leave, he said, 'You will write a symphony for organ, and mademoiselle will come to America and play it, and I will conduct it.' I couldn't believe my ears! I had never orchestrated ... never heard an orchestration of mine. I'd never written a piece that lasted 20 minutes. I was working on a ballet which had different short sections. So, I said to her, 'Do you think I can do it?' 'You can do it,' she said. Well that settled the discussion. Once she said, 'You can do it,' I did it. FC: But I'm still impressed that she came to this country and performed it in New York and Boston. AC: She did. She did. FC: Did she play it well? AC: Very! She was an excellent organist. Everything she did, she did well. She was one of those people. FC: Yeah. AC: That was real luck, to have found her as a teacher. That ... you have to have some luck in this world. I would have started studying with somebody in Paris, but it probably wouldn't have been the same thing. Stravinsky FC: Did you meet Stravinsky in Paris? AC: Yeah. Yes, I did. She took me to his house, and ... for tea or whatever it was, and introduced him, and introduced me as a young American composer. FC: What did he think of that? AC: What did he think of it? FC: Yeah. AC: Well, He was a pretty tough baby, Stravinsky ... He didn't, he wasn't kindly. He didn't sort of stroke you on the back and say, 'Oh…well… write good music, dear.' (laughs) He was a toughy ... but very smart in the head. FC: Do you enjoy his music? AC: Yes. FC: Most of it? AC: Yes. Well, it was the hottest thing around when I was in Paris. It was the new thing, you see. He wasn't the world famous Stravinsky, yet, but he was well on the way. He was such a short guy. All these great composers were so short! (laughs) FC: Did you feel you sort of towered over him? AC: I towered. Oh, yes! It was a little embarrassing! FC: But to have Prokofiev looking over your shoulder ... Oh, I'm sure it was a distraction. But this was also ... What did you think of him mostly. As a composer, or as a teacher or as a pianist? Because it seems to me he was one of the great concert pianists, wasn't he? AC: He was a very fine pianist, but I thought of him as a composer, of course. He was there in his capacity as composer, and his music was being played then in Paris, in the orchestral performances especially. He was giving concerts himself of his own music. He was a very good pianist you know. The Tender Land AC: Well, I suppose The Tender Land was meant to sound like me ... It's a lyric opera. It isn't one of those big dramatic numbers where somebody gets murdered… But it's only had kind of a modest goal, I would say. It hasn't really caught on. FC: Tell us about the suite. How do you extract a suite from an opera? AC: Well, I don't think there's any general principle you follow, except that naturally you take those parts which seem ... to be able to transcribe the vocal sections of the opera adequately in instrumental terms…and not all operas lend themselves to that kind of treatment. I think The Tender Land, I think I got away with that particular problem fairly well. FC: Frankly, what flaws do you find in it, because I don't find any. AC: Flaws in the opera? FC: In the opera, I find all the characters just very tender, very true. AC: Well, you're saying just what I like to hear. It isn't a very strong dramatic line, you know. The audience isn't going to be knocked out of their seats by what they see on the stage. It's a lyric work, meant to be rather tender and feelingful. There's even a dance scene, in the second act, that's lively. But, I used a friend of mine to write the libretto. I let him go ahead when he suggested he'd like to. And, I suppose if I'd used a ... worked with a real pro, someone who had written many plays and knew the theater very well, we might've concocted a more exciting dramatic line of ... some changes certainly would have been made. But, I'm hoping that in some of the productions that I have seen, that the music carried the, comparatively the simple plot along adequately, and it's meant to make a kind of warm and personal feeling rather than a big, dramatic number on the operatic stage. FC: It also seems to deal with something, some aspect of this country, and of our history, that is almost like a long lost age. I mean, it's like so much of the writers of the '20's and the '30's. Even though it was a fairly dreadful period economically, there's a nostalgia about that period that doesn't seem to die out, and then The Tender Land seems to fit right into that. AC: Hmm ... I never thought of it in those terms, but I think you've got something there. FC: But, you lived right through it. AC: Did I what? FC: You lived right through it. AC: Yes, I sure did. FC: Many of us didn't AC: Yes, I keep forgetting that ... that many of us didn't. Third Symphony FC: Actually, your Third Symphony, I gather, seems to have been tailor-made for Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, was it? AC: I would say so, yes. Well, I'd say it was made with them in mind. I knew the kind of new music Koussevitzky liked -- big sound, and sort of ambitious and of a certain length. And, of course I knew the sound of the Boston Symphony very well. FC: Would that account for the great brass work? AC: Could. Up to a point. After all you have to write the music you're going to write. But it is fun to know what orchestra is going to play it, and to have in your ears the sound of that orchestra. FC: Apropos of I don't know what, but I, one of the world premieres of yours which I did attend was the opening of Lincoln Center. And I can still feel the sound of the brass instruments (AC -- Really?) In that performance. AC: Which work was that? I can't… FC: Connotations. AC: Oh, the Connotations, of course. Yes, that never caught on, like they say. It wasn't that sort of piece that catches on. FC: Well, are you going to be patient? Because I'm sure it will sooner or later. AC: Oh, I'll be patient. I really should do it myself more often. I've ... One tends to get into a conducting rut. When you make programs, you tend to think of the things you've been playing a lot. And it does take a special audience and plenty of time to rehearse a piece like the Connotations. FC: Again, harking back to Prokofiev for no reason. It puts me in mind that, if I had to talk about my favorite Prokofiev pieces, I'm inclined to think the piano pieces, and I'm inclined to feel the same about you. AC: Really? FC: Yes. I think. Well there's one piece, one work of yours which, every time I hear it, I have the feeling I've heard something new, and those are the Piano Variations. AC: Well, good! FC: Are you fond of that work? Please, tell me you are. AC: Very! I certainly am. I certainly am. I like the three principle piano works I did, the Variations, the Piano Sonata, and the Piano Fantasy. That work of mine lasts one and one half hour without pause. And when you dare do a thing like that, you have to pay the price that not many people are willing to sit and listen to a piece that starts one minute and finishes 30 minutes later without pause. And certainly not many pianists are willing to put such a piece before an audience. You have to really believe in it to want to take the chance. FC: But you have some marvelous people who believe in it. I mean, Meselev, Leo Smit, and Paul Jacobs. AC: Oh, yeah. Very well read. FC: Well, these are the people who'll carry you on forever, won't they? AC: Yes, I hope so. Somebody's got to! |
