“The music of Leon Kirchner—pugnaciously inventive, straddling past and present—has enlaced itself into Paula Robison’s life for decades,” writes David Weininger in Friday’s (10/31) Boston Globe. “The composer seemed a natural choice when Robison began thinking about commissioning a flute concerto in 1975. Compositional delays, the piece’s open-ended nature, and a substantial revision by the composer would all combine to make Kirchner’s Music for Flute and Orchestra a more labyrinthine undertaking than Robison had expected. The odyssey comes full circle on Wednesday, when she will give the first performance of the restored version of the original piece with the NEC Philharmonia under Hugh Wolff…. Robison wasn’t even sure that the concerto would be complete until about a month and half before its October 1978 premiere with the Indianapolis Symphony…. Robison played the piece several times in the late ’70s and early ’80s.… A definitive score was never created … and Kirchner died in 2009…. Finally, in 2013, Schirmer told her that if she could arrange two performances, they would at long last engrave the score properly. Wednesday’s performance at NEC will be the first outing for the original version of Music for Flute and Orchestra since 1982. A second, with the New World Symphony under [Michael Tilson] Thomas, will follow in February.”
Posted November 4, 2014
