Stefan Wolpe

Stefan Wolpe - Stefan Wolpe

From the liner notes by Joseph Livingston and George Kittle:

Stefan Wolpe is, in the words of Aaron Copland, "One of the most remarkable of living composers . . . his music is striking original . . . some pounding natural force brings it forth and gives it reality . . . Wolpe is definitely someone to be discovered."

The late critic Paul Rosenfeld said of Wolpe: ". . . the very eminence of his gifts may have helped obscure him. Save to climbers on the mountainside, few individuals are less conspicuous than those beginning to reach the summit, and it is among the living handful who are organizing their music on very high levels that Stefan Wolpe is to be found."

Wolpe's techniques include all those currently exploited by the most advanced composers, plus many discoveries and inventions of his own; his pieces are individual, solid, original, profoundly conceived and fully realised. He is in the line of great composers in Western music. Esoteric Records is to be commended for presenting for the first time his music on records.
Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and Piano
Performers: Bob Nagel - trumpet; Al Cohn - tenor saxophone; Al Howard - percussion; Jack Maxin - piano
This work develops a line always inherent in Stefan Wolpe's music - jazz, or so-called popular music.
Written with a deceptive Mozartian lightness, it is nevertheless based on a concept of polarity, extremes of desperation and joy; the two movements in dynamic opposition. It is a piece that can be thoroughly enjoyed at first hearing; it is fluid - a mobile structure in which flexibility and circulation of sound behave like river currents which inundate larger and larger areas. We have only to float on this tide of sound to discover that Wolpe has enlarged for us the scope and dimensions of pure pleasurable sensation.
Typical of the composer himself, this work represents the personal development of a vigorous spirit, alive to every fragment in the rich store of arts and sciences that is man's heritage.
The Quartet is as direct as Beowulf in its impact, as subtle and powerful as Guernica; it is a story of man's struggle with the monsters of the times and of his victory over them.
Passacaglia
Performer: David Tudor - piano
The theme of this work, performed here by the American pianist David Tudor, is built progressively of all the intervals and the eleven counter-themes are constructed on 12-tone successions of each interval. The economy and perfection of the motives are fully realised and exploited in a polyphonic continuum that flows and develops into unexpected and highly imaginative channels.
All the rigors of formal design are adhered to, but the austerity of the construction is counter-balanced by the freest possible handling of voices at all levels, by strongly contrasting sections, and powerful climaxes.
This is a striking example of how apparently hard, dry and academic ideas, rooted in technical soil, can bear the most glorious esthetic fruit. Rare indeed is the work which so deliberately flouts the stuff out of which it is made; this is material which challenged Wolpe to exert utmost skill and artistry, and so great is his skill that the listener is unaware of the struggle.
The Passacaglia is a natural bridge flung over the precipice of years from the sixteenth century into a future unknown and uncharted.
Sonata for Violin and Piano
Performers: Frances Magnes - violin; David tudor - piano
This work was composed for and dedicated to the American violinist Frances Magnes, who gave its premier performance in Carnegie Hall with David Tudor. It is a work of brilliant complexities, lights and shadows, a mosaic of richness and detail in which piano and violin are fused and separated and fused again into a web of polyphonic sound that explores every possibility of orchestral combination.
The work is sculptural; the shapes are molded from a group of primary tones and crystallized into new and refreshingly original forms branded with the peculiar Wolpe-force. The extensions are specifically overlayed onto mounting tensions, distortions and flux; each is identified with and revises the material, pounding it into strange and fascinating shapes. The interplay of harsh, sinuous ringing tones suggests something magical.
In all four movements certain configurations of pitch act as a centralizing force and a qualifying criterion for changes which constantly take place in the action-process; the zones of operation are based on a system of spatial proportions which Wolpe discovered and developed over the years.
The work is related to the Passacaglia, a kinship based on Wolpe's profound use of interval-relations in the purest sense - as in all his compositions it is dfined by an inner logic. The listener is challenged to comprehend an atmosphere at once rarified and yet full of compressed ideas which explode into sound or drift out into trackless boundaries of the imagination.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and Piano {12:41}

2. Passacaglia {11:39}

Side 2

1. Sonata for Violin and Piano: Un Poco Allegro {5:56}

2. Sonata for Violin and Piano: Andante Appassionata {7:23}

3. Sonata for Violin and Piano: Lento-Scherzo vivo-Lento {3:10}

4. Sonata for Violin and Piano--Allegretto deciso {8:12}

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