1966
for
String Quartet and Electronic Tape
Leon Kirchner
Beaux Arts String Quartet
1965 Chamber Music Competition
Leon Kirchner was a composer, pianist, conductor and longtime Harvard teacher. His teachers included Schoenberg, Sessions and Bloch, and his musical collaborators included Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Serkin and Leon Fleisher. His Third String Quartet received the Pulitzer Prize, among several major honors for his music.
Summary of Kirchner’s note: Electronic sounds extend and reflect the strings within an integrated musical dialogue that depends on human performance.
Leon Kirchner was an American composer, pianist and conductor whose music was shaped by studies with Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions and Ernest Bloch. Born in Brooklyn, he grew up in Los Angeles and became a prominent teacher as well as a creator of orchestral and chamber music. He spent many years on the Harvard faculty. His First and Second String Quartets received New York Music Critics Circle awards, and his Third String Quartet won the Pulitzer Prize. His performers and advocates included Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Serkin and Leon Fleisher. Kirchner also received the Naumburg Award for his First Piano Concerto and the Friedheim Award for Music for Cello and Orchestra.
