An early Composers Recordings today featuring Eva Wollman as soloist and F Charles Adler as conductor. The program consists of Antonio Lora's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Adolph Weiss' Theme and Variations for Orchestra. Since both composer's are unknown to me and, I have nothing to compare the performances to, I will offer the original liner notes from the lp. I will say that this recording is an important document regrading Adler's important role in promoting contemporary composers to wider audiences.
"""THE COMPOSER-PIANIST, ANTONIO LORA, was born in Italy, but since his early youth,
has lived in the United States. His studies in theory and composition were pursued with Rubin
Goldmark and Eduardo Trucco; his piano training with Alberto Jonas. In 1924, he made his
pianistic debut at Aeolian Hall in New York City.
The following year he began studies at New York University, where his teachers were Philip
James and Albert Stoessel. In 1927, having been awarded a Fellowship in Composition at the
Juilliard Graduate School of Music, he embarked on a four-year period of advanced study from
which he was graduated with honors.
Then, exchanging the role of pupil for that of teacher, he joined the Juilliard faculty and
remained there until 1936, when he relinquished his post in order to concertize in Europe. His
recital appearances took him to Holland, Switzerland, and Germany, and in addition to his
many performances, he found time to supervise presentations of his own music. He was invited
by Alexander Spring, then General Manager of the State Opera in Cologne, to write an opera.
The outcome was a three-act music drama, “Launcelot and Elaine,” with a text by Josephine
Fetter Royle, based on Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.”
In addition to the opera and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra here recorded, Lora has
composed two Symphonies, a ballet, a light opera based on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” an
operetta for children, numerous chamber works and instrumental pieces, and about fifty songs.
Concerning the latter, the late Marion Bauer wrote:
“The style of Antonio Lora’s songs is dominatingly impressionistic—not the impressionism of
Debussy or Ravel, but of the modern Italians. This impressionism shows more in his
accompaniments than in the melodic line. His harmony is definitely coloristic and chromatic;
the deft hand of an excellent pianist is evident in his treatment of the accompaniments, which are
always effective musically, and occasionally on the difficult side. They are more influenced by
harmonic principles than by contrapuntal ones, and he knows the secret of unification by the use
of reiterated pattern. The composer understands the possibilities of the voice, and his music is
well written for this medium.”
The CONCERTO FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA was composed in 1948, while Lora was
a member of the faculty at Ohio State University. It is cast in three movements, of which the
composer has given the following descriptive analysis:
Maestoso-Allegro
“The piano, opens with a series of powerful introductory chords and octaves, followed by the
announcement of the first theme in the orchestra. This pattern is reiterated before an episode
leads us into the second theme, which is again announced by the strings and repeated by the
piano. The development is animated and vigorous. There is interesting interplay between solo
instruments and orchestra, culminating in an orchestral climax and the cadenza. The
recapitulation, with foreshortening of both themes, leads to a brilliant coda.”
Andantino, quasi Andante
“The theme proper is preceded by contrasting solo utterances from piano and front orchestra.
An obbligato-like thread in the piano’s upper register decorates an elegiac theme which the
strings sing out, growing in intensity until the solo instrument breaks forts with a surging and
impassioned presentation of the subject matter. There is a brief respite before a restatement of
the opening measures.”
Allegro molto-Burlesco
“Like the first movement, the third is cast in the traditional Sonata Allegro form. After a few
octave passages in the piano, the orchestra launches into the theme proper, which typifies the
articulate and rhythmic nature of the entire movement. The jaunty mood is sustained with no
letup, save for the contrasting second theme and the short cadenza. If the orchestral texture is
restrained and rather subdued, this was intentional, for I wished the sonorities and crystalline
tones of the piano to be heard at all times above the orchestra.”
WHEN ADOLPH WEISS’ THEME AND VARIATIONS FOR ORCHESTRA were
premiered in April, 1936, by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Monteux,
Alfred Frankenstein, critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, described them in these terms:
“Weiss succeeded in combining the utmost scholastic craft with powerful and poignant
expressive values. On the purely musical side, the impression of the first hearing is one of
tremendous concentration of energy. The theme is put through a series of brilliantly designed
transformations, but there is no meaningless elaboration of unessentials. Astonishing twists of
texture are unfolded; new and interesting orchestral devices are revealed.”
An interesting bit of information not mentioned in this quotation is that the variations are based
on the sequence of stanzas in Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.” The
music does not describe the stanzas, nor could it be called programmatic. But, in the composer’s
own words, “The spiritual content of the poem fixed the sequence of musical ideas as well as the
form of the composition.”
The variations are twelve in number, growing out of the original theme, a broad, highly-arched
melody which progresses mainly in sevenths. The first phrases of the theme are stated by a solo
bassoon, supported by a richly swelling texture of strings. The high woodwinds are introduced
momentarily, still supported by strings. Finally, in the theme’s closing portion, the bassoon
reaffirms its opening phrase; a triplet motif which has played an important part in the melody is
again brought forward, and the section ends. At the conclusion of the entire work, this same
theme is recapitulated literally, giving a sense of completion to the form and acting as a reorienting
point for the ear.""
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