Music: Weill and the Duke
First Concert in New Series of Moderns
By ROSS PARMENTER
“MUSIC FOR MODERNS, a new concert series that plans to mix jazz and contemporary music in its programs, got off to an entertaining start last night at Town Hall. The first of its four programs was called “Twelve-Tone to Ellingtonia.”
Such a title suggested some sort of chronological survey, but what Anahid Ajemian and George Avakian, the sponsors, presented was one twelve-tone piece (Kurt Weill’s Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra) and a set of twelve pieces by Duke Ellington, eleven of which were suggested by Shakespeare’s plays.
The Weill Concerto was written in 1924, when the composer, then 24, was a student of Ferrucio Busoni. It was led by Dimitri Mitropoulos, who also studied composition with Busoni. Miss Ajemian was the soloist and the ensemble was the Music for Moderns Chamber Orchestra, which consisted mostly of men from the New York Philharmonic Symphony.
The only previous performance of the concerto in this country was at a private concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art two years ago. Miss Ajemian was the soloist then, too, which probably helps to account for the authority of her playing. In the first movement she was largely an ensemble player, but in the later movements, when the violin is more important, she made the instrument stand out, and she was as effective in the slightly ironic “Cadenza” as in the melodious “Serenata.”
The concerto had plenty of ideas, even if it seldom went very deep. And at this stage in our musical development the twelve-tone idiom as employed by Weill sounds only modern enough to provide a certain piquancy to the harmonies.
Duke Ellington and his band took over after the intermission. They were introduced by Tom Patterson, director of planning for the Stratford Ontario Shakespearean Festival, because the Ellington work played, “Such Sweet Thunder,” was written at the request of Mr. Patterson’s festival. The performance was the world premiere, and it was because the twelfth piece was not completed that Mr. Ellington added “Cop Out,” another of his works, to round out the dozen.
Each piece was brief, and each was an imaginative portrait in sound suggested by characters or scenes in Shakespeare’s plays. There was “Sonnet for Sister Kate,” in which Quentin Jackson made his trombone almost talk; “Lady Mac,” written as a ragtime waltz because of the belief that Lady Macbeth had “a little ragtime in her soul,” and “Sonnet for Caesar” in which Jimmy Hamilton lamented in sweet tones on the clarinet.
In one Mr. Ellington and his co-writer, Billy Strayhorn, mixed characters from two plays—Iago and the Witches from “Macbeth,” They called the piece “The Telecasters.” “Sonnet for the Moor” was a plaintive piece played mostly at the piano by Mr. Ellington, accompanied softly by drums and double bass. “Such Sweet Thunder,” which gave its name to the suite, was written for the whole band and in sound it suggested a powerful locomotive, though its program was Othello’s speech to Desdemona that so impressed the Senate.
In the one suggesting Hamlet acting as though he were mad, a trumpet was made to chirp like a bird. It was part of the general inventiveness in the use of the instruments employed. Altogether, the pieces were thoroughly winning, for none went on too long, and each sketch had sympathy as well as humor. And though the musical invention might have derived in part from other pieces of the “Duke” it all sounded fresh.”
New York Times, April 29, 1957, page 5
The first post on Music for Moderns may be found here.
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