A composer who rebelled against modernism

Mr. Holland: I doubt that you would enjoy any of the Naxos McKay discs, and I would not waste your time and money on them if I were you. I think you probably would be appalled by all three of them.

However, I bet you might enjoy all three Naxos George Rochberg discs: the Violin Concerto, the Second Symphony and the Fifth Symphony. The Naxos recording of the Rochberg Violin Concerto is the original version, before Isaac Stern imposed severe cuts on the piece.

The Second Symphony is serial, and very, very beautiful. I think you would love it. I am told that George Szell admired the work. The Fifth Symphony is mostly tonal, and also a very strong work. It was written for Solti and Chicago.

I suspect that you would find the three Rochberg discs to be very rewarding, while I think any of the McKay discs would cause you to grind your teeth.

Writes Andrew on my post about puffery and closed-mindedness. Read more about George Rochberg in this tribute headed Composer Who Rebelled Against Modernism which quotes Rochberg as saying he 'experienced mounting disaffection with the New York avant-garde, which dominated intellectual circles in the 1960s. "I ran in to New York as often as I could to hear concerts, and it all sounded gray and dull, by people with vast reputations based on what, I'll never know," he recalled in a 2001 interview.'

As Philip Glass himself said: These were the factors that brought about the rise and fall of 'the twentieth century music' that became so familiar during the century's final decades, because in narrowing the field down to one that was financially supportable, it also narrowed down the musical options.

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Anti-Semitism comes full circle

There was a real feeling of camaraderie and shared aspiration. Yet the (Vienna Philharmonic) orchestra was riddled with anti-Semitism, and Solti’s relations with it were frequently troubled. When he later received the Gold Medal of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde for the Ring and other opera recordings, practically no one from the professors of the orchestra committee turned up. They all had their excuses – teaching, travel or prior engagements.

On the morning of the presentation day, Solti was telephoned in his room at the Imperial Hotel and a woman’s voice said, ‘They are not coming because you are a dirty, Hungarian Jew.’ After receiving the award, as Solti walked along the corridor, the door of the office of Ernst Vobisch, the orchestra’s Chairman, was open, and all the missing committee members were sitting there having coffee. Vienna doesn’t change.

The much-missed John Drummond recalls Georg Solti and 1960s Vienna in his autobiography Tainted by Experience (Faber, ISBN 0571200540). For more on this terrible subject read about a rare performance of a holocaust opera.
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