What a chromatic piece! Luckily, I didn’t miss any of those notes. Then the bass solo from Stravinsky Pulcinella and the one from Haydn 31. Those were very familiar to me- not really sight reading at all! Then things took a turn for the worse. Mr. Boulez puts this unusual music on the stand. It was from Alban Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces.
Check out the last two measures! I said, “I don’t believe that’s a bass excerpt!” “But it is!”, Boulez maintained.
So, I played it somehow- not sure how!
Boulez laughed and said, “So you see, it is a bass part!”
Then a gift- I had just played this at Juilliard- Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie opus 9. It is an early work- written for 15 instruments and only one bass. Musically, it is a transition between the early Schoenberg of Verklaerte Nacht and his atonal music. I hear a Richard Strauss influence in it as well.
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