Donald Martino / Milton Babbitt - Harvey Sollberger

 

Triple Concerto / Arie da Capo

Donald Marino: Triple Concerto

for Clarinete, Bass Clarinet & Contrabass Clarinet

With a Chamber Orchestra of Sixteen Players

Recorded December 1978, New York

Milton Babbit: Arie da Capo

The Group for Contemporary Music

Harvey Sollberger, Conductor

Recorded May 1979, New York

Coordinator: Teresa Sterne

Design & Art Direction: H. Lee

Cover Art: R. Miller Vogel

Engineering & Musical Supervision: Marc J. Aubort, Joanna Nickrenz (Elite Recording, Inc.)

Mastering: Robert C. Ludwig (Materdisk Corp.)

Nonesuch H-71372 (Stereo)

1980

From the back cover: Donald Martino (b. Plainfield, N.J.) began his early musical career as a clarinetist. He studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions, and Luigi Dallapiccola, and he holds music degrees from Syracuse and Princeton universities. He has taught at Princeton and Yale, has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard, and taught composition at the Berkshire Music Center, where, in 1973, he occupied the post of Koussevitzky Composer-in-Residence. Since 1969, Martino has been chairman of the Composition Department at the New England Conservatory. He has received numerous distinguished commission and awards, including the Brandeis University Creative Arts Awards Citation in Music, BMISCA Awards, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In May 1974, Martino received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Notturno, a work heard on Nonesuch (H-71300), performed by Speculum Musicae.

Milton Babbitt (b. Philadelphia). whose early musical activities included performance as a clarinetist, studied composition with Roger Sessions. He holds degrees from New York University and Princeton and has been awarded hooray degrees by Middlebury College, Swarthmore College, New York University, and the New England Conservatory. Active as composer and teacher, and a prolific writer on musical subjects, Babbitt is a founder and member of the Committee of Direction, Electronic Music Center of Columbia-Princeton Universities, and a member of the Editorial Board of Perspectives of New Music. He has taught at Salzburg, Tangle wood, Darmstadt, and the New England Conservatory. Babbitt began teaching at Princeton in 1938, and since 1966 he has been William Shubael Conant Professor if Music, Princeton University; he also teaches composition at the Juilliard School. Babbitt has received a long list of distinguished awards, honors, and commissions and is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Two other instrumental works by Milton Babbitt are heard on Nonesuch: String Quartet No. 2, performed by the Composers Quartet (H-71280); and All Set, fro Jazz Ensemble, performed by the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Arthur Weisberg (H-71303).

Founded in 1962 by Charles Wuorinen, Harvey Sollberger, and Joel Krosnick, the Group for Contemporary Music was the first of the active contemporary-music ensembles to be directed by composers who also played and conducted. With Wuorinen and Sollberger as co-directors (joined in 1971 by Nicolas Roussakis as executive director), the Group has enlisted the participation of many of New York's leading contemporary musicians. Its first nine seasons of concerts were presented at Columbia University' McMillin Theatre, in cooperation with the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center; in 1971, the Group for Contemporary Music became affiliated with the Manhattan School of Music. Since its inception, the Group has performed throughout the United States and in Europe and has presented hundreds of new works, many of them in world premieres. The Group for Contemporary Music has recorded for Acoustic Research, CRI, Epic, Turnabout, and Nonesuch.

Harvey Sollberger (b. 1938, Cedar Rapids, Iowa) studied flute with Betty Bang Mather and Samuel Baron, composition with Ottl Luening and Jack Benson, and conducting with James Dixon; he holds degrees from the University of Lowe and Columbia University. Renowned as one of this country's leading flutists and an authority on contemporary flute techniques (see Twentieth-Century Flute Music, Nonesuch HB-73028, in which Mr. Sollgerger is the featured soloist), his work as composer and performer has received recognition in the form of numerous commissions and awards. He is co-director of the Group for Contemporary Music and he teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and Columbia University. Sollgerger has recorded – as composer, conductor, or flutist – for Acoustic Research, CRI, Desto, New World Records, Turnabout, and Nonesuch

This recording is dedicated to the memory of Maude E. Brogan (1927 - 1978), Director of the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Inc., 1972-1978, whose generous aid to the Group for Contemporary Music in its preparation of Triple Concerto during the fall of 1978 made the premiere performance  possible; and to the memory of Josef Marx (1913-1978), whose guiding spirit gave inspiration and support to the Group during its early years.

Donald Martino (b. 1931)

Triple Concerto (1977)

for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet & Contrabass Clarinet

with a Chamber Orchestra of Sixteen Players

Anand Devendra, soprano clarinet

Dennis Smylie, bass clarinet

Leslie Thimming, contrabass clarinet

The Gourp For Contemporary Music

Patricia Spencer, flute, piccolo, alto flute

Stephen Taylor, oboe, English horn

Donald MacCourt, bassoon

Richard Lawson, bassoon, contrabassoon

David Jolley, horn

Ronald Anderson, flugelhorn

Glenn Kenreich, tenor-bass trombone

Clifford Zeavin, tenor-bass trombone

Benjamin Hudson, violin

Carol Zeavin, violin

Janet Lyman Hill, viola

Chris Finckel, cello

Joseph Tamosaitis, contrabass

Raymond DesRoches, percussion

Claire Heldrich, precussion

Aleck Karis, piano, celesta

Harvey Sollberger, conductor

Milton Babbitt (b. 1916)

Arie da Capo (1973-74)

(In one movement) for Flute, Clarinet & Bass Clarinet, Violin, Cello & Piano

The Group For Contemporary Music

Sophie Sollberger, flute

Anand Devendra, clarinet & bass clarinet

Benjamin Hudson, violin

André Emelianoff, cello

Aleck Karis, piano

Harvey Sollberger, conductor