NEC to Premiere Reconstructed Kirchner Work

New England Conservatory flutist Paula Robison, Calderwood Director of Orchestras Hugh Wolff, and  the NEC Philharmonia will team up to present the world premiere of the reconstructed version of Leon Kirchner’s 1978 Music for Flute and Orchestra, November 5 at 8 pm in NEC’s Jordan Hall.  Robison, to whom the work was dedicated by the distinguished Harvard faculty member and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, had long wanted to create a definitive performing version of the piece and have it engraved by a publisher. After a summer spent on detailed editing work with Wolff, a former composition student of Kirchner, and with the go-ahead of G. Schirmer music publishers, her dream is finally coming true.

Robison, who occupies the Donna Hieken Flute Chair, related the story of her quest while the editing work was still underway:

Leon Kirchner! A great composer, a charming and unpredictable man! Maddening often: he could not seem to finish a piece; he was always going back to change something, to try and find a way for the music to express the inexpressible, to put into a phrase the undulations, the shimmering, the mystery of a lush green forest!

This, combined with a constantly probing intellect. This, combined with a wish, during the strongest reign of serial music, to preserve the curves of a phrase, the elegance of a line. The year was 1978. I had commissioned Music for Flute and Orchestra and the premiere was only a month away. The piece was not finished. I called Leon every day: “Hello, Leon! Are you working?” “Oh Paula…” was the constant response, in the stressed-composer tone of voice. Then suddenly one day: “Paula! Paula! Listen!” and he played for me the stunningly beautiful opening bars, the simple pentatonic flute theme followed by a rush of orchestral sound and an explosion of color in the percussion. I was in heaven. My piece was born.

It is a gleaming, colorful piece, inspired in part by Daphnis et Chloe and the lush orchestration of that work, but also filled with jungle mystery and birdsong since Leon was writing his opera Lily at the same time. It has its "big band" moments too, in true Kirchner style. Big orchestra, lots of percussion and brass.

There were some wonderful performances of it: with Michael Tilson Thomas and San Francisco, Buffalo, and American Symphonies (A signed page of Leon's score is on one of the walls at Carnegie Hall.), with Atlanta, others. Then, because the score was almost impossible to read (Leon's manuscript) it fell into silence for many years as I tried to find a way to have it engraved. Very few conductors would even look at the score! I had only a badly reproduced recording, so there was no way to really listen to it.

MTT still championed it. Leon revised the piece around 1998 and MTT and I did it at the Ojai Festival and at Harvard. It was more "tuneful". But I liked the original version better, because all the conflict of his earlier years was in it: more sexy! In Leon's last days I stood over him with a stick until he cut and pasted all his ideas into the original manuscript. Then it languished some more. I never lost hope that in my playing life I could somehow perform it again, and make it available to future generations. Now G. Schirmer (thanks to Kristin Lancino and David Flachs) is engraving a new score, and it's going to be beautiful! Amazing to see everything clearly! Hugh and I are now correcting and clarifying the score. And there is much back-and-forth as we combine our memories. It's an exciting time for me. It's good to scale all the Kirchnerian heights again. I've been practicing like a crazed person, in preparation for it all....

The concert, which also includes Barber’s School for Scandal Overture and the Schubert Symphony No. 9, is free and open to the public.
For further information, check the NEC Website or call the NEC Concert Line at 617-585-1122.  NEC’s Jordan Hall, Brown Hall, Williams Hall and the Keller Room are located at 30 Gainsborough St., corner of Huntington Ave. Pierce Hall is located at 241 St. Botolph St. between Gainsborough and Mass Ave.