(Aug 12) NMA 82 Chicago - Live Radio - show 1 part 2 with transcript
"The" (Philip Larson and Ed Harkins), Charles Amirkhanian, Joan La Barbara, John Cage (that afternoon), Clara Rockmore (on tape from 1979)
Clara Rockmore wikipedia photo uncredited
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1982_07_06/NMA_1982_07_06_B_ed.wav
Contents:
(repeat of introduction from part 1)
♪0:00 “The”
(It being highly visual, Amirkhanian and La Barbara often cut in to describe for radio audience)
25:20 Amirkhanian/La Barbara extro
27:33 Amirkhanian and La Barbara interview with John Cage at the S. S. Clipper – from that afternoon
36:35 Amirkhanian intermission feature interview with Clara Rockmore, recorded in NYC in 1979
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Program 1, July 6, 1982
live national broadcast (part 2 of 3)
Charles Amirkhanian, Joan La Barbara hosts
(from part 1)
1:02:15
Joan La Barbara: We’re about to be treated to a performance event by the group THE which consists of vocalist Philip Larson and vocalist and trumpeter Ed Harkins. Both from San Diego and both have been studying extended vocal techniques, that particular area of vocalizing that uses the voice as an instrument and you’ll hear some of their very special vocal techniques in their piece tonight called Voldy.
It’s also a very sight-oriented piece, so we may find ourselves describing some of the actions that are taking place on stage. There’s quite a wonderful bit in the piece that I have happened to have seen several months ago in California in which Harkins is playing the trumpet and six, ah, continues to put different kinds of mutes into the trumpet and continues to get the same sound until we find that at the end, that he’s been making the sound not with the trumpet but with his voice. An extraordinary, yeah…
Charles Amirkhanian: I think… (chuckles)
Joan La Barbara: ... (chuckles) sight gag.
Charles Amirkhanian: I hear there’s also some dry ice fog effects…
Joan La Barbara: Yeah, dry ice fog and…
Charles Amirkhanian: …there are fishtanks on stage.
Joan La Barbara: A little car crosses stage very slowly. A lot of wonderful visual things, some, some films of golf games taking place in the desert, with Harkins and Larson climbing over rocks.
Charles Amirkhanian: Looks like a sort of magician set up. There are two standing screens on stage, each of them about six by nine feet, on the left and right of the stage and in the center, a black backdrop and then a number of pedestals which are covered with colorful cloth that hang down to the floor, as if they might hold underneath them some surprise and as Joan La Barbara has just told you, this is a piece which will involve some spectacular sounds and sights as well. So if you hear some mirth emerging in the form of laughter from the audience, you will know you are missing something very funny. (Chuckles)
Joan La Barbara: (chuckles) We’ll try to keep you appraised of what’s going on, on stage, so you don’t miss so much.
Charles Amirkhanian: We’re live here at the Navy Pier auditorium, this is the first of six concerts from New Music America ’82.
Joan La Barbara: And we’re in the midst of a spectacular thunder and lightning storm out here in the middle of the water (chuckles) .
Charles Amirkhanian: Which means that we may or may not be with you for the rest of this broadcast…
Joan La Barbara: (chuckles)
Charles Amirkhanian: …so we hope that things will hold. Um, coming up at intermission, we’ll also be hearing from John Cage as we run out to the SS Clipper, which is just down the pier from us, in the permanently docked ship and in their Art Deco bar. We will talk with the maestro about his new piece for the city of Chicago.
Also later we’ll be talking hopefully with Dennis Russell Davies who conducted the Orchestra Hall concert last night, which is the opening event of the 1982 New Music America festival.
Joan La Barbara: And we may even have time for a special feature on Clara Rockburn.
Charles Amirkhanian: Clara Rockmore?
Joan La Barbara: Clara Rockmore, okay. (Chuckles)
Charles Amirkhanian: That’s what I thought you said. Clara Rockmore is a famous theremin player and we will have an interview with her and some of her performing coming up at intermission.
Joan La Barbara: We’re about to have the sounds of THE.
Charles Amirkhanian: The lights are dimming and we expect on stage these two performers momentarily.
[end part 1]
Part 2
♪0:00 applause, “The”
9:21 applause
♪9:45 “The”
(cutting in to describe over the music)
11:45
Charles Amirkhanian: You’re listening to the duo “The” and the – and moments ago, they were slapping their own bodies as they sat in chairs, all of these movements very stylized, very much, ah, in unison, one person…
Joan La Barbara: Completely choreographed.
Charles Amirkhanian: …which, absolutely stunning and um, right now, they’re standing dead still on the stage, while this new wave style music is playing.
Joan La Barbara: With ah small hand fans that ah…
Charles Amirkhanian: Japanese fans…
Joan La Barbara: (chuckles) Yes…
Charles Amirkhanian: …every once in a while they open abruptly. Absolutely absurd and they’re in black costumes against a black background. Now they’re ah, standing, facing the ceiling very rigidly, side by side and with their hands at their sides, every once in a while. In each performer’s right hand, the Japanese fan will snap open and shut, quite dramatic.
♪12:40 “The”
17:15 (cutting in over the music to describe)
Joan La Barbara: The sounds that you are hearing of ah, water is (chuckles) being done live by our two performers dipping their hands into fish tanks, on stage.
Charles Amirkhanian: Amplified, no less. And now the lights have dimmed and the fish tanks are glowing in the dark. What is that, Joan?
Joan La Barbara: I really have no idea, Charles. (Chuckles)
♪17:40 “The”
18:24
Joan La Barbara: What you’re – ah, what (chuckles) we’re watching here is ah, a film of a kind of golf game out in the middle of the desert. Harkins and Larson are teeing off at the top of some giant boulders.
Charles Amirkhanian: Golfing, golf is one of the hardest sports to portray on ah television or film and I think I’ve lost the ball.
Joan La Barbara: (chuckles) So have they! (Laughs)
♪19:02 “The”
20:02
Joan La Barbara: What the audience is laughing at, at the moment, a billowing fog is crossing the stage and there’s a very small car…
Charles Amirkhanian: (chuckles)
Joan La Barbara: …moving very very slowly across the stage…
Charles Amirkhanian: What it – how – how’s that car…
Joan La Barbara: Oh, I think it’s attached…
Charles Amirkhanian: …[...]
Joan La Barbara: …it’s attached to a string being pulled slowly across the stage. We’re still seeing parts of the ah, golf game and the boulders.
Charles Amirkhanian: You’re listening to New Music America ’82 live from Navy Pier auditorium and a performance by a group from San Diego consisting of two performers, Philip Larson and Ed Harkins. The group is called “The” and ah, very – a great deal of what the audience here at Navy Pier is seeing is theatrical, obviously, but ah the electronic music and all of the ah sight gags and all of the ah bizarre musical imagery are part of what makes this group very successful on television and not so successful on radio in some cases! But we’re enjoying it and we hope you are getting some pleasure from listening to the curious sounds produced by this group.
♪21:12 “The”
25:06 applause
25:20
Joan La Barbara: We’ve been enjoying the performing talents of Ed Harkins and Philip Larson, the group called “The” and they’ve been performing a piece called Voldy, a thoroughly enjoyable experience visually. They’re – they’re some of the funniest performers working in the area of new music and possibly in the – all of the areas of entertainment. You’ve missed a lot just listening, um, a lot of the, the – um, performance had to do with visual gags, films that we were describing, golf games happening on boulders and ah, dry ice, little lights crossing the stage.
Charles Amirkhanian: Ed Harkins is also a great trumpet player, I’ve heard him do some…
Joan La Barbara: Fantastic trumpet player.
Charles Amirkhanian: …fabulous contemporary music performances…
Joan La Barbara: Um-hum.
Charles Amirkhanian: …Phil Larson’s music, I don’t know, have you heard it?
Joan La Barbara: Well, he’s a, a classically trained bass baritone and ah, does a lot of classical, ah concerts and ah they were both part of the group in San Diego called the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble and then they separated and formed “The”. Ah, they’ve been performing as a group for the past two or three years now, and ah, all of their work involves what we can call performance art, but it’s, it’s really a kind of high comedy area, um, involving tapes and ah, films and visual light gags.
26:41
Both of them ah perform with a, absolute deadpan expression which really heightens the ah, the sense of what’s going on. The audience obviously enjoyed themselves.
Charles Amirkhanian: We’re live at the first of six concerts from Navy Pier auditorium at the New Music America 82 festival and on our program so far, we’ve heard Tom Cameron of Chicago and Robert Moran doing Spin Again. On the second half of our program, we’ll have Wayne Siegel, an American living in Denmark doing a beautiful piece for piano and electronics called Autumn Resonance. And then Meredith Monk and her ensemble with Turtle Dreams.
Joan La Barbara: We pause now for station identification. From Chicago, these are the sounds of New Music America ’82.
(pause)
Wikipedia photo of John Cage by Anne Keyvan
(recording from earlier this day)
27:33 (scratching and street noises)
Charles Amirkhanian: As you probably can imagine, we have moved away from Navy Pier auditorium, about ah fifty yards down the pier to the US ah Clipper which is today ah, housing an installation of a piece by John Cage called A Dip in the Lake. Joan La Barbara is here with me and ah, Mr. Cage, the composer. This is ah…
John Cage: Hi.
Charles Amirkhanian: …your impression of Chicago, I take it?
John Cage: Well, actually it’s a twelve tone piece.
Charles Amirkhanian: What do you mean…
Joan La Barbara: (Laughs)
Charles Amirkhanian: …by that, John? (Chuckles)
John Cage: (chuckles) There are twelve tape machines and there are 88 loops. The reason there are 88 loops is – is because there are 88 keys on the piano and the piano has such an effect on Western music, you know. But the way the twelve tape machines, you just have 12 loops of all sorts 12 tone keys.
Charles Amirkhanian and Joan La Barbara: (chuckles)
John Cage: And you can change from one loop to another.
Charles Amirkhanian: Ah the piece sounds were taken from where?
John Cage: Not from the lake, but from Chicago.
Joan La Barbara: According to the ah, the map of Chicago and your, your…
John Cage: Right.
Joan La Barbara: …drawings and your store on, on that…
John Cage: Right.
Joan La Barbara: …map. Um-hum.
John Cage: I think if I’d been around, I’d put a little water in it.
Charles Amirkhanian and Joan La Barbara: (chuckles)
Joan La Barbara: It seems so obvious, we’re out here…
John Cage: (Laughs)
Joan La Barbara: …on the pier and there’s water all around us. It seems funny not to have some water music and some foghorns.
John Cage: Right.
Charles Amirkhanian: The…
Joan La Barbara: We’ll get that anyway.
Charles Amirkhanian: …one of, one of the interpretations of the piece can be to go to the place where the points intersect on the map and record the sounds there, is that..
John Cage: You can either go and record there or go and listen there, or go and – and go and perform there.
Charles Amirkhanian: That’s beautiful. The ah, environment here is ah really special. It’s sort of a art-deco…
Joan La Barbara: Yeah, we should talk about that, we’re on board a ship, the S.S. Clipper, um, that’s docked at Navy Pier and um, it’s just a wonderful room.
John Cage: Actually, it reminds me of a ship years ago, I – I took from San Pedro up to San Francisco.
Charles Amirkhanian: What was that occasion?
John Cage: Oh, it was fi-, it was something that Californians did all the time, they either went south to Los Angeles, and they went [...]
Joan La Barbara: (chuckles)
John Cage: …or they even went to ah, San, San Diego.
Charles Amirkhanian: Really? On ship?
John Cage: Yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: A lost art. (Chuckles) The um…
John Cage: It – it was lost I think about the same time that the, that the Bay region lost the ferry boats. And – and the whatchamacallems, the, things going up and down the hills.
Charles Amirkhanian: The cable cars.
John Cage: The cable cars, yeah.
30:06
Charles Amirkhanian: John, I’ve – I’ve been meaning to ask you, it seems like a lot of the people playing music on the festival are composers working in a sort of ah minimal repetitive consonant music tradition, right?
John Cage: (chuckles) That’s what they sound like (Laughs) too!
Charles Amirkhanian and Joan La Barbara: (Laughs)
Charles Amirkhanian: And on the other hand…
Joan La Barbara: Hardly! (Chuckles)
Charles Amirkhanian: And – and I’ve wondered if – if maybe the discovery of younger people, of the music of Steve Reich and Terry Riley in some way paralleled when you were younger, your discovery of Satie and if you had thought about that and had any comment on – on the repetitive music which, which we hear so much of on programs like New Music America.
John Cage: Oh – I – I don’t know, Charles. Um, I – I think for me that repetition began because of my notion of the rhythmic structure. And I – I noticed in a program note for the – for the opera of Philip Glass, that he was speaking about ah, structures and I bet you a nickel ah that we could have an interesting conversation.
Charles Amirkhanian: So it was from the Indian talas and ragas, ah, that the repetition…
John Cage: Yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: …idea came, not from Satie?
John Cage: Well, when I think when you, when you work with a, with a time structure, that the notion of ah, taking something and filling up the structure by means of repetitions ah, is almost a natural. Say, say you have seventy measures and you have a ten measure idea, ah, it immediately occurs to you to do it, ah, how many seven times or ten times or…
Charles Amirkhanian: Seven times again…
John Cage: Yeah. Then you could have a seven measure (chuckles) and need to attend –
Joan La Barbara: (chuckles)
John Cage: …you know, you can – you immediately begin to think of, of things that go together in interesting ways. In this case, this piece, ah, the – the lengths of the tapes are chance determined so there’s some kind of permutation going on that’s incomprehensible. All you can do is…
Joan La Barbara: Is there um, when they change the tapes, I know with so many of your pieces, they’re – it’s organized ah according to specific timings so that events happen at a, at a…
John Cage: Um-hum.
Joan La Barbara: …certain time during the flow of the piece.
John Cage: Uh-huh.
Joan La Barbara: When they change the loops, is that according to a time plan or is that…
John Cage: No, it – it’s…
Joan La Barbara: …more random?
John Cage: …it’s just a, it, it’s just according to whether one of the ah performers wants to do that. Or, in something breaks. If something breaks, then I think as in all of our technological society, the highest priority is (chuckles) to fix it!
Joan La Barbara: Yes! (Laughs)
John Cage: (Laughs)
32:42
Charles Amirkhanian: What were your thoughts about last night’s orchestra concert?
John Cage: I thought it was great.
Charles Amirkhanian: Seeing – all, all of that happen in Orchestra Hall in Chicago was a bit of a shocker.
John Cage: It was just marvelous. I think the – and the only people who seemed the least little bit surprised or unhappy were the, ah, orchestra players themselves.
Joan La Barbara: (Laughs)
John Cage: Not all of them. But one or two, I thought the piccolo player was a little bit, ah, mum. (Laughs)
Joan La Barbara: That it was being enjoyed and that there were so many people…
John Cage: Yeah…
Joan La Barbara: …and it was a success.
John Cage: …and because he – when he sat down, when he sat down it – he was, he thought, well, I’ll just show the audience that I don’t take this very seriously. But before the piece, before Alvin’s piece was up, he saw that he had to take it seriously because everybody else does.
Joan La Barbara: Everybody else, and the audience was, was really taking it seriously. They were, at the edge of their seats when (Laughs)
John Cage: I never have forgotten that remark from – not the Chicago Symphony but from the New York man, who said to me it’s like, as they – I walked off the stage, he said, “come back in ten years, we’ll teach you better!”
(Laughs)
33:53
Joan La Barbara: And they have. (Chuckles)
Charles Amirkhanian: So, ah…
John Cage: Well, they still have a ways to go.
Joan La Barbara: Well, they’re improving. (Chuckles)
John Cage: They’re improving, yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: I think my – my thoughts ran to this idea: why if this is so exciting, don’t we do this all the time?
John Cage: Well, we probably will. Ah, that is to say, all the time is a, a hard thing to, to ah define. Ah, if you say the fourth of July happens all the time, you mean it happens once a year, you know.
Charles Amirkhanian: It – it’s just that orchestra concerts really can be so lively and…
John Cage: Yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: …and kind of exciting in a way which we had forgotten about, not just the Beethoven exciting.
Joan La Barbara: I think it’s – it has to do with the management being aware that there’s a large audience for new music and ah…
John Cage: You know what I think, ah, we should get behind the – this business you were talking yesterday about the need to raise money to pay for such, ah, festivals. I think the music unions could do it. I bet you a nickel they have large funds that would sort of be recycled by these festivals back into the musicians.
Joan La Barbara: Um-hum.
John Cage: Don’t you think?
Charles Amirkhanian: Sounds like a workable idea.
John Cage: Yeah.
Joan La Barbara: Yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: It’s just that most of the people in the unions are as conservative as the people who give you trouble on stage as…
John Cage: Yeah, but…
Charles Amirkhanian: …performers…
John Cage: …but ah when this happens and – and pleases ah…
Charles Amirkhanian: …many people…
John Cage: …many people then the musicians think well, they’ve got to change their minds.
Charles Amirkhanian: Curiously, I think they expected though maybe three to five hundred people last night and 1800 showed up.
John Cage: Yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: Isn’t that right, about 1800…
Joan La Barbara: I guess, yeah, yeah…
Charles Amirkhanian: …now that’s…
Joan La Barbara: …that was the figure.
Charles Amirkhanian: …a mammoth audience.
John Cage: Some of us think 2000 too.
Charles Amirkhanian: Really.
Joan La Barbara: (chuckles) It really looked full!
Charles Amirkhanian: What were the police estimates? (Laughs)
John Cage: 2300!
(Laughs)
35:42
Charles Amirkhanian: We have to go back to our broadcast, but it’s been a pleasure talking with you…
John Cage: (Laughs)
Charles Amirkhanian: John Cage, whose ah seventieth birthday is being honored here at the New Music America ’82 festival.
Joan La Barbara: And we’re about to cut the cake I think with Mayor Byrne.
John Cage: Oh, really?
Joan La Barbara: (Laughs)
John Cage: Is that right? But it isn’t microbiotic.
Joan La Barbara: Oh, well, you can look at it…
John Cage: (Laughs)
Joan La Barbara: …and enjoy it, it’s the vision! (Chuckles)
Charles Amirkhanian: Thank you John.
John Cage: Thank you Charles
36:06
(back in the live studio)
Charles Amirkhanian: It’s intermission time here at New Music America ’82, our first of six concerts and once again, another experimental music flashback. A look at the history of new music in the United States.
We’re going to be listening to music performed on the Theremin by the great artist Clara Rockmore.
36:35 (tape seems to have been initially played at the wrong speed)
♪Clara Rockmore
Uncredited photo in Wikipedia of Rockmore and Termen
37:25 (music in background)
Charles Amirkhanian: Recognize that soprano voice? Well, maybe not. In the first place, it’s not a human soprano. It’s the sound of an instrument built by the Russian inventor Leon Termen in 1927 and played here by the world’s only virtuoso performer on the instrument, Clara Rockmore. Listen again.
♪37:50 Clara Rockmore
38:17 (with Rockmore/Tchaikovsky in background)
Charles Amirkhanian: Clara Rockmore was a child prodigy as a violinist. A student of the great Leopold Auer, for whom Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto*. But an unfortunate problem with her right arm prevented her from continuing her career after her arrival in the US in 1927.
Nevertheless, her desire to make music led her to take up performing on the newly invented vacuum tube instrument, which Mr. Termen had just introduced to the United States. Unfortunately, the instrument is nearly impossible to play. It is to this day the only space controlled instrument. Nothing actually is touched by the performer.
The player stands behind what looks like an old upright radio console with two rods protruding from it. One rod played by the left hand, waving in the electromagnetic field around it controls the volume of sound coming out the loudspeaker. The right hand waves in the proximity of the other rod, controlling the pitch of the sounds. There is no key or fret or string to touch. The player must practice until she can place her hands at the exact correct point in space to produce the proper tones at the proper volume.
Clara Rockmore’s deftness as a violinist gave her the perfect background for developing skill at this practice. In addition to which she had perfect pitch, almost a necessity for playing the Theremin as it’s called. She developed exercises for playing scales and octaves, and since it’s much easier to play slides or glissandos than step scales, she worked hard to develop a technique which enabled her to play step by step pitches and therefore an ability to take regular composed pieces of music and transcribe them for her instrument.
Nobody else ever has approached her virtuosity on the instrument and since there are few Theremins of good quality to practice on, it appears that there will be no students for Miss Rockmore to teach in order to carry on the tradition.
40:21
In 1979, I visited Clara Rockmore in her New York City home to talk about her new LP, on Delos Records in which she plays works by Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, Stravinsky and others, accompanied at the piano by her sister, the famous Nadia Reisenberg. Her serious approach to her instrument is evident in her response to a question about how composers should write for the Theremin.
Clara Rockmore: In term of electronics, people always seem to think of weird sounds, strange sounds, ah, strange rhythms, everything has to be strange and loud and noisy. Whereas the Theremin space controlled instrument which I play, is essentially if you think in terms of a singer, who has all the voices. A singer who can sing basso, baritone, ah, tenor, mezzo-soprano and soprano. If you think of a combination of a single lift, who could sing all these voices wouldn’t you find it interesting to compose something?
(♪ Rockmore in the background)
But essentially you have to keep in mind that it should be melodious. It’s a melody that sounds beautiful, it’s not jumps and you are completely correct in assuming that arpeggios are not possible, physically, and it’s also has a very dramatic quality, but a deep quality, well it’s sort of – it’s a very expressive instrument and the – the, the also it has that one privilege, you can play as quietly as a whisper and the orchestra is lovely because they never have to keep them. I – there is no limit to the volume, the volume is limited by my musical taste. I am not going to yell or shout.
But I can – I can soar or whether the orchestra are playing full blast which has an advantage over that they don’t have to tone it down as the music demands, they can do that full, this and the instrument will soar above it.
♪ 42:24 Rockmore
42:32
Charles Amirkhanian: In fact, there was a very successful concerto written for Theremin and orchestra by Anis Fuleihan but it hasn’t been played for decades. Clara Rockmore then recalled an unusual event in which Leon Termen rented Carnegie Hall to demonstrate his new electronic instruments in the early thirties. Among his inventions was a device similar to the Theremin, but constructed for a dancer to play with the entire body.
Since no dancer he could find was able to control the pitch or dynamics of the instrument successfully, Termen turned in desperation to Miss Rockmore who saved the day. To the audience, the only apparent onstage mechanism was a box on the floor about the size and shape of a conductor’s podium.
Clara Rockmore: This was and is I think the – the perfect synchronization of sound and motion and as I am not a dancer, and all the dancers who tried were not able to, to play on it, I demonstrated that particular one time at Carnegie Hall by standing on my knees in a prayer motion and ah playing a perfect ah Ave Maria Gounod ah using as aesthetically as I found it in me to do, I had the choice of doing the same fifth or the same third either with the motion of my hand and the motion of my face and moving my head and lifting my chin or touching my shoulder going back and forth.
In other words I had the freedom of any part of my body ah and I played the perfect Ave Maria of Gounod with my body.
Charles Amirkhanian: Clara Rockmore, Theremin player, one of the fascinating pieces from her Delos record of music for Theremin and piano is her playing of the Vocalise by Rachmaninoff.
♪ Rockmore/Rachmaninoff
44:38
Charles Amirkhanian: Once, during afternoon tea at her house many years ago, she played this piece for Olga Koussevitzky, the wife of the famous conductor of the Boston Symphony and singer Jenny Turrell, the renown opera and recital star.
Clara Rockmore: And ah Jenny Turrell was almost in tears and she paid me the greatest compliment that one musician can pay on another, she said, “would you permit me to send to you one of my students with a beautiful voice who is studying that piece? You found in it treasures which I didn’t find, I want her to hear what you do.” And I, I cherished that compliment for all those years.
♪Rockmore/Rachmaninoff
45:50
Charles Amirkhanian: The music you’ve heard is taken from the Delos Records LP, Clara Rockmore Theremin. It was produced by Robert Moog, inventor of the famous Moog synthesizer. As a young man, he was inspired to make his instrument after hearing Miss Rockmore play her own. The interview with Miss Rockmore was recorded in her Manhattan apartment, on March 7, 1979. This is Charles Amirkhanian.
♪Rockmore/Rachmanioff
47:02
Joan La Barbara: You’re listening to the sounds of New Music America ’82. On the second half of our program tonight, we’ll hear Wayne Siegel performing his Autumn Resonance for acoustic piano that is amplified and then fed through a tape delay system.
Following that will be Meredith Monk and her group doing a portion of Turtle Dreams.
Charles Amirkhanian: We pause now for station identification. From Chicago, these are the sounds of New Music America ’82.
[end part 2]
*Wikipedia: “…was composed with the help of Tchaikovsky's pupil and probable former lover, Iosif Kotek. Despite Tchaikovsky's original intention to dedicate the work to Kotek, he instead dedicated it to Leopold Auer due to societal pressures. Auer, however, refused to perform it…”