Gerard Schwarz Joins The Frost School of Music

The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami has appointed Gerard Schwarz as Distinguished Professor of Music; Conducting and Orchestral Studies. The announcement was made by Shelton G. Berg, Dean of the Frost School of Music. Schwarz will assume his position in the fall of 2019, and he will be a full-time member of the faculty as Professor of Practice in the Department of Instrumental Performance.

Internationally recognized for his moving performances, innovative programming and extensive catalog of recordings, Gerard Schwarz is Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony, and Music Director of the All-Star Orchestra, Eastern Music Festival, the Mozart Orchestra of New York, and Conductor Emeritus of New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.  He has recorded over 350 albums as a conductor and has received 6 Emmy awards, 14 Grammy nominations, 8 ASCAP Awards, and numerous other accolades.  He is a noted composer, and also has 6 million enrollees in his courseware with the All-Star Orchestra for the Khan Academy.   A champion of new music, Schwarz has conducted more than 300 world premieres. Maestro Schwarz also played a leading role in the creation of Seattle Symphony’s Benaroya Hall. His much-anticipated memoir, Gerard Schwarz: Behind the Baton, was published by Hal Leonard Performing Arts Publishing Group in March 2017.
 
“We are ecstatic to welcome the esteemed Gerard Schwarz to the Frost School”, says Dean Berg.  “He is a tour de force as a conductor, musician, composer and recording artist. As an educator, Maestro Schwarz personifies our Frost Method Curriculum®, which holistically trains musical leaders for the 21st Century. An embodiment of excellence, Gerard has created iconic organizations and raised the bar everywhere he has been.  I have no doubt that working with our world-class colleagues, he will help us achieve new heights.”
 
“Shelly Berg, the Dean at the Frost School of Music, has created a unique musical and educational environment, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to join him and the superb faculty to support the great artistic leaders of the future,” Schwarz said. “Music education, for professionals and audiences alike, has been a guiding force and passion in my life, and I look forward to bringing that commitment to the Frost School under the mission of creative innovation and artistic excellence.” 
 
Regarding new initiatives Maestro Schwarz plans for his position, Schwarz comments:
“I hope I will be able to continue and add to the growth of this wonderful school of music. My ideas for the orchestral/educational program are ones that are already embraced by faculty. Specifically, I would like to expand the graduate conducting program to train conductors, who will lead ensembles of all levels. I have always believed in the interaction of the community with an orchestra or school and I would like to expand this initiative with the Frost Symphony Orchestra. Shelly Berg, Robert Carnochan, Conductor of the Frost Wind Ensemble and Chair of Instrumental Performance, and I have already begun discussion of annual festivals beginning with a festival around 20th century American music. Of course, programming for the Frost Symphony Orchestra is very much on my mind and I think of this in three distinct areas: the most important works of the great repertoire of the past; works that have proven to be excellent of the 20th century that need exposure; and new works.”
 
Gerard Schwarz succeeds Thomas Sleeper, who conducted the Frost Symphony Orchestra with distinction for 25 years.  The Frost Symphony Orchestra maintains an active performance schedule, on campus and beyond. Frost School orchestras have long had the distinction of performing with some of the most celebrated conductors and soloists from around the world including Pierre Monteux, Leopold Stokowski, Gregor Piatigorsky, Jasha Heifitz, and Arthur Rubenstein. In recent years that tradition has continued to include Joshua Bell, Edgar Meyer, Jennifer Koh, Dawn Upshaw, Eric Owens, James Newton Howard, Bobby McFerrin, Cristian Macelaru, Simone Dinnerstein, and many others. American Record Guide called the world premiere of Surinach's Symphonic Melismas, "The most auspicious premiere by the UM Symphony since 1956 when Andre Kostelanitz conducted the premiere of William Schuman's New England Triptych here."

The FSO and Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra have released recordings with Sony Music, Concord, Centaur, Cane and Albany Labels with excellent reviews. Former members of the FSO hold positions in prestigious ensembles and serve as arts administrators, teachers, conductors throughout the world.

Read the announcement from The Frost School of Music here.

Violin Channel: Meet the Pros – American Conductor Gerard Schwarz

Violin Channel

The Violin Channel recently caught up with American conductor and trumpeter Gerard Schwarz – in New York City.

We sat him down for a fun game of VC 20 Questions – to help gain some fascinating insight into the Maestro behind the music.

In honor of Veteran’s Day Weekend, All-Star Orchestra kicks off collaboration with U.S. Marine Band

A unique collaboration: the All-Star Orchestra’s Gerard Schwarz conducts the U.S. Marine Band – America’s oldest continually performing musical ensemble – founded by an act of Congress in 1798, and dubbed “The President’s Own” by no less than Thomas Jefferson.  Three programs feature the most famous concert band masterpieces, including works by Gustav Holst, Percy Grainger, William Schuman, and of course John Philip Sousa.  

Schedule for WNET Thirteen – Saturdays at 1:00 pm

November 10     Above and Beyond
The beloved folk melodies and lively dances of Grainger’s “Lincolnshire Posy” start off the program. A fascinating history of the 229-year-old U.S. Marine Band leads into Maestro Schwarz’ own “Above and Beyond” – dedicated to the Marine Band. Next comes Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon’s thrilling “Fanfare Ritmico.” Sousa’s “Semper Fidelis” March – conducted by the Director of the U.S. Marine Band, Colonel Jason K. Fettig, brings this first episode to a rousing conclusion.

November 17    New England Spirit
Revolutionary War melodies provide the inspiration for William Schuman’s iconic “New England Triptych,” including the moving meditation “When Jesus Wept” and the thrilling “Chester” as performed at several Presidential inaugurations. Next, Vincent Persichetti’s colorful “Masquerade” shows off the Band’s amazing virtuosity. The program concludes with Sousa’s immortal “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

November 24    Classic Band Masterpieces
The First Suite by Gustav Holst (famous composer of “The Planets”) is an early masterpiece in the concert band repertoire, paired here with the first complete Symphony for Band by the great Paul Hindemith. The splendor of Chinese percussion in Bright Sheng’s “Shanghai Overture” brings the series to a spectacular finale.

About Gerard Schwarz
Internationally recognized for his moving performances, innovative programming and extensive catalogue of recordings, American conductor Gerard Schwarz serves as Music Director of the All-Star Orchestra, an ensemble of top musicians from America’s leading orchestras featured in sixteen television programs that have aired throughout the United States on public television, worldwide by internet streaming and is the basis for their Khan Academy education platform that has already reached over 6 million students. As in popular sports, Schwarz created an “all-star” team of top orchestra musicians to encourage a greater understanding and enjoyment of classical music. All programs are now released by Naxos and have been awarded six Emmy Awards and the Deems Taylor Television Broadcast Award from ASCAP. Schwarz is also Music Director of the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina where he celebrated his 10th Anniversary season in the summer of 2017, Music Director of the Mozart Orchestra of New York, Conductor Emeritus of the Mostly Mozart Festival and Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony. The conductor is a renowned interpreter of 19th century German, Austrian and Russian repertoire, in addition to his noted work with contemporary American composers.

For more information on Gerard Schwarz, please visit: https://www.gerardschwarz.com
For more information on All Star Orchestra, please visit: http://allstarorchestra.org
Trailer: https://youtu.be/PmZJp4wIMAI

Musical America: Conductor Gerard Schwarz Pays Tribute to Benaroya Hall at 20

Musical America
Gerard Schwarz

On the 20th anniversary of the first concert at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Maestro Schwarz reflects on the opening night concert among other events during the hall’s first few weeks. Read his reflection here.

21CM: Gerard Schwarz Premiere

21CM

This concert features the world premiere of Gerard Schwarz’s latest duo for violin and cello alongside the New York premieres of his first two duos. These will be played by Schwarz’s son, cellist Julian, and Bargemusic’s president, violinist Mark Peskanov. Pianist Misha Dichter joins for a Schubert trio.

21CM Takeaway: Since stepping down from his post as music director of the Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz has been able to focus more of his musical talents on composing. Between Schwarz’s music and its sublime players, this is a concert sure to satisfy.

KUSC: Championing American Music with Conductor Gerard Schwarz

KUSC
Alan Chapman

Gerard Schwarz was the second-ever conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra before spending 26 years on the podium with the Seattle Symphony. KUSC’s Alan Chapman caught up with him while Schwarz was in town to help celebrate LACO’s 50th anniversary. Here’s their conversation about the unique logistics of Schwarz’s first concert with LACO and how he (secretly) became a champion of American music in Seattle.

ClassicsToday: Big Boxes - Gerard Schwarz Delivers the Goods on Naxos

ClassicsToday
David Hurwitz

This has got to be the most intelligent, comprehensive, and well-earned big box tribute to a living conductor yet assembled...

There’s too much music in this set for me to be able to describe it all. Suffice it to say that all of it is worth hearing, all of it is extremely well done, and all of it reveals Gerard Schwarz to be one of the most capable, smart, musicianly, and versatile artists before the public. He deserves the recognition, and Naxos has done him proud.

Read the full review here, available to ClassicsToday subscribers.

Primephonic: Gerard Schwarz at 70 - An Interview

Primephonic

Gerard Schwarz, music director of the All-Star Orchestra and the Eastern Music Festival, and Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony, enters his 70th year. Marking the occasion, an impressive 30-disc album has recently been released on Naxos Records. Primephonic caught up with him to discuss his impressive career, superb recordings and unstoppable endeavours.

The Gerard Schwarz Collection

The Gerard Schwarz Collection has been released to mark your 70th birthday, showcasing retrospective recordings in a 30-disc album. This year also saw your memoir published and Emmy Awards. What are your thoughts on what has been a year of exciting events?

It’s a dream come true to have all of these things come together at the same time. The memoir I wrote of course was very meaningful to me. I never was intending to write one but for a variety of reasons, there it was. It’s called Behind the Baton. It’s about performances, it’s about repertoire, it's about conducting, but it's also about living a life in music. There are many lessons to be learned as you go along and I thought for future generations I might be able to give them some hints on how I dealt with issues that came about like building a hall and building an orchestra.

And with the recordings, Naxos had approached me with this idea and I contacted Nonesuch where I had done about 21 or so LPs. Many of these were never released on CD, and many which were released on CD were out of print. I even had to transfer some LPs, which was really interesting, and once Nonesuch said yes, the process began. With the great support of Klaus Heymann, I thought “Wow, we really have something here.”

 We found a version of Schubert’s Third recorded with the New York Chamber Symphony that was never edited and we had a Schubert Ninth that I really wanted to get out but the tapes had disintegrated, and then it went from there! There are some Handel Arias which I really love and I wanted Mozart to be part of it. We did the Brahms Schoenberg Piano Quartet from the Eastern Music Festival, and of course many of my old trumpet recordings. I thought it was important that I included a few CDs of American repertoire that has been so important in my life. It was a thrill. And 30 CDs is a lot of CDs!
 

Photo credit: Steve J. Sherman

I also recently did a program with the Juilliard Orchestra that was like a dream come true for me. Difficult music of Diamond, Druckman and Schulman. All composers associated with the school. I was just thrilled and the kids loved it. All this stuff is going on this year and it makes me extremely happy.  

You were music director with the Seattle Symphony for 26 seasons and are now conductor laureate. It must be an honour to have led one of the world’s top orchestras. What was your biggest achievement during your time there?

Starting from where it was artistically and bringing it to a new level and broadening the repertoire was so important to me. And then, of course, helping to build Benaroya Hall. I believe there are five things you need for success. The first are talent and intelligence. The second is work ethic, you have to work very hard. Then a positive attitude, I call it a yes attitude. And there’s willingness to do anything, to go beyond the job description. I thought about that a lot, it’s not just something that I’ve come to casually and I see it all the time, in my kids and in my own family. And it’s also not just in music, it can be in any career.  

You are known for championing works by American composers, such as Walter Piston, William Schuman, David Diamond and Philip Glass. What was in your opinion, the most significant performance you conducted?

What jumps out at me are a few things. Doing all the symphonies of Schuman for Naxos Records was extremely significant, it had never been done before. There’s a recording here or there of this piece or that piece, but we’ve never had them all, so that was very important. To do a live recording of the Deems Taylor opera Peter Ibbetson and get a live recording was very important as well as Howard Hanson’s Merry Mount was also a big opera. To do David Diamond’s 10th Symphony, which I think was a significant event for me and the orchestra. It was the only symphony premiere I did of his. The others were premiered by Mitropoulos, Koussevitzky, Munch, Ormandy, Bernstein and Masur, so it was nice to be part of that group.

The Emmy-Winning All-Star Orchestra TV Series was filmed with an impressive 18 high-definition cameras and is back for a new season. The orchestra is made up of players from some of the country’s top orchestra. Did you hand-pick the players?

In my last years in Seattle we did a few television shows where the format was not live. We would record two to three performances and do some packages around them with educational talks and interviews. They were quite successful. Then we were actually allowed to record one without an audience, so we had performances on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, but none of Friday. I asked Andre Watts and the orchestra if they would consider doing a performance on Friday morning with nobody in the audience so we could get better camera shots. They all agreed, we did it, and it was incredible. That show won Emmys and I thought to myself, what an interesting idea.  

“Made for television” concerts really hadn’t existed in this country since the late fifties. Everything was “Live” and always two hours with intermission and filler so I thought to myself what if we went back and did an hour-long concert with a talk surrounding it. And then from all the material we have now recorded, do some really significant educational work. That’s how it came about. I went to a group of friends in Seattle and told them I had this idea. Actually Jody my wife named it, and I said I wanted it to be fundamentally American, like all-star baseball. Then I got a half dozen people together who were friends and said “Hey, why don’t we try this”. That was the genesis of the very beginning of it.

Photo credit: Ben Van Houten

What would this orchestra be? Then I thought why not ask my friends at a variety of American orchestras to participate. I didn’t want it to be associated with just one orchestra, I wanted it to be associated with American orchestras. We have players from 30 different orchestras.

And then there’s how. Well I chose my friends, I got recommendations as necessary from them and then each section was happy. I tried to get many leaders from major orchestras. That’s how it all began.  

What was your reason for starting up the All-Star Orchestra?

We produced the TV shows thus far and we have won six Emmys, but I really wanted to get an important educational component. So the first year we did a lot of interviews with experts and players, not knowing what we were going to do with it, but I wanted to somehow make a difference educationally. I feel the two big issues are exposure and education. So the exposure part was covered, television was free and I wanted education part to be free as well. I wanted to give music teachers more tools to enhance what they were doing. With all this material, we were able to convince the Kahn Academy to do some music education, which they had not done before. We raise money for everything and it becomes available for free. So far we’ve reached 6 million students.

 My hope is that 6 years from now, someone goes to the Philadelphia Orchestra and says “Oh, I first saw David Kim with the All Stars and fell in love with his music and his violin and now I really want to come to Philadelphia Orchestra concerts.”

Do you have any advice for young budding conductors?

There’s a lot of advice and a lot of it is in my book but you have to study really hard, you have to really know music. So many kids study beat and time and that’s of minimal importance. What’s important is knowing musical ideas and making performances. Having all the qualities that I spoke about before in terms of success. To take advantage of every opportunity. If they ask, “Would you conduct the local band?” say yes. Do everything you can do and most importantly have perseverance. It rarely comes easily or quickly, you have to stick with it. I don't know any conductors that haven’t had to continue to persevere at it. Many give up but you need to have the energy to keep going.

What do you see for the future?

Conducting all over the world, which I love. My number one priority is the All-Stars and music education, helping its resurgence in the schools. I want us all to be flourishing in this world. My main focus is to think about that. I’m composing a lot. I enjoy it, which is shocking to me because I never used to.

I’ve done now three TV shows with the Marine Band in the same format as All Star Orchestra to teach about band music because music lovers at orchestra concerts don’t know what a band is or the repertoire is. And, hopefully we’ll be doing more shows with the All-Star Orchestra.


Gerard Schwarz in conversation with Jennifer Harrington
 

New York Classical Review: Schwarz, Juilliard Orchestra deliver stellar advocacy for neglected American composers

New York Classical Review
George Grella

Gerard Schwarz conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in works by David Diamond, William Schuman and Jacob Druckman Thursday night.

In the middle of the last century, there was a group of American composers who wrote symphonies. Their collected body of work carved out a specific, national sound—skyscrapers and sleek, powerful automobiles, urban sophistication expressed in clear and straightforward language—and did more than the work of John Cage or Steve Reich to make the 20th century an American one for classical music.

Charles Ives and Aaron Copland were specifically not part of this cohort. William Schuman, David Diamond, Walter Piston, Peter Mennin, and others eschewed the self-conscious “American” sound of Ives and Copland, they were modernists working within the classical tradition but without ideology, whether populist or academic—they assumed the worth of the classical tradition and the open-minded intelligence of their audience. Their music reflects New York City in an era when everything seemed possible.

Yet without conductors like Gerard Schwarz this music would remain even more lost, as it incomprehensibly has been for almost sixty years, with the rare exceptions amounting to little more than dutiful condescension.

Thursday night in Alice Tully Hall, Schwarz led the Juilliard Orchestra in Schuman’s Symphony No. 6, David Diamond’s Symphony No. 4, and the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra from Jacob Druckman. And for 90 minutes it again felt like all things were possible.

The last time the New York Philharmonic played these two symphonies was 1958. Their most recent Schuman performance was Andre Previn leading Symphony No. 3—his most prominent work—in 1997. Based on the parochialism of prestige in this city’s culture, that is beyond bizarre.

Nothing could be more fitting than Juilliard musicians bringing life to his substantial Sixth Symphony. Schuman—a native New Yorker who switched from business to start composing at age 20,managed to tear his attention away from baseball to compose around 70 pieces. He was president of Juilliard from 1945 to 1962, during which time he turned it into the modern institution it remains today.

He was also the first president of Lincoln Center and served until 1969. One would expect monuments to him. At least there was this energetic, passionate performance that completed the concert.

Schuman’s Symphony No. 6 is from 1948. Like most of the symphonies of his peers, it’s not about anything in particular except the art of making music. Yet his voice is immediately identifiable. Neoclassical in general, these pieces expressed the virtues of counterpoint, development, and formal structure. To this Schuman added a poly-harmonic language, stacking related triads on top of each other to produce a sound that is tonal but floats free of the usual expectations of harmonic motion.

The Juilliard Orchestra made a big, meaty sound with this, although there were times when the density of the writing turned muddy. There is a coiled physical and psychological energy in this symphony that the players expressed with a real poignancy. It is easy to hear the national exhaustion after WWII in the music, and Thursday night it was also easy to hear a fraught outlook toward the future.

Schoenberg told Diamond that the latter should avoid learning serial technique because he was “a new Bruckner.” That’s not too far off–his symphonies express, in the composer’s words, “strong melodic contours [and] good rhythmic variety and counterpoint.”

He called the Fourth, from 1945, “my smallest large symphony,” and it is indeed a compact, succinct three movements while still having Diamond’s sense of bigness; big, rich sound and a big expressive embrace.

The opening dozen bars, with their polyphony and cascading harmonies, are some of the most beautiful in all the symphonic literature. Opening the concert with the Fourth, Schwarz– a more dedicated advocate of these composers than even Bernstein–maintained smooth, loping tempos throughout, and the musicians produced a gorgeous sound. They didn’t have the professional level of blend, but the music unfolded in phrases that captured Diamond’s art, and the interplay between sections was excellent.

Jordan Bak performed Jacob Druckman’s Viola Concerto Thursday night.

Jordan Bak was the soloist in Druckman’s Viola Concerto, from 1978. Another important New York composer, Druckman was the Philharmonic’s composer in residence from 1982 to 1986 (has son Daniel is a percussionist in the orchestra) and taught at Juilliard and Brooklyn College.

The concerto had a more abstract form than the symphonies, and included an identifiable 12-note row, but as in the others the language was clear and intelligent without being academic or solipsistic. The form is antiphonal, an agon, and Bak was dazzling. A graduate student at Juilliard, he played with a full-bodied sound and exacting intonation and articulation. He overshadowed the composition in that his playing was so constantly involving and impressive that one was drawn to each note and phrase, and often lost the forest for the tree. But what a tree.

This music and these composers, especially Schuman and Diamond, are crying out for performances from professional orchestras. One hopes that last night, someone across the street in David Geffen Hall was listening.

The New Yorker: The Return of Mid-Century American Symphonies

The New Yorker
Russell Platt

Gerard Schwarz, pictured here in 1982, conducts works by David Diamond, William Schuman, and Jacob Druckman, which recall an America that no longer exists. (Photograph by Jack Mitchell / Getty)

The conductor Gerard Schwarz’s upcoming concert with the Juilliard Orchestra, at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday, highlights an essential but overlooked period of American composition: the great mid-twentieth-century symphonies.

There was a time—the late nineteen-eighties and nineties—when it seemed as if the American symphonic repertory was finally taking a definite shape. Neo-Romanticism was the rage among young composers, who were in search of a usable past, and among conductors, too, who were on the lookout for music of recent vintage that their audiences might embrace, or at least tolerate. I remember attending, around 1990, a concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra at which the conductor Leonard Slatkin, a champion of American composers, tested his theory of the ideal program: it would contain a contemporary work, a twentieth-century classic, and a good old classical warhorse. The centerpiece of the concert was Symphony No. 3 by William Schuman (1910–1992), and it anchored the evening emotionally. (It was convincingly preceded by the music of Joan Tower, who is now an admired elder stateswoman, and followed by the music of Brahms.) Written just before America’s entry into the Second World War, the Schuman piece was a perfect balance of mid-century American qualities: lyrical but muscular, sensitive but optimistic, spikily chromatic but clearly tonal, learned in its craft but accessible in impact. The audience, especially revved up by the work’s wallop of a finale, went nuts. Surely, we thought, the finest works of Schuman—and of such contemporaries as Walter Piston, David Diamond, Samuel Barber, and Leonard Bernstein—were here to stay.

Well, three decades later, while Barber and Bernstein have become fixtures of the American repertory, both here and abroad, Schuman, Diamond, and Piston have not been so lucky. Why? You could say that most orchestral administrators would like two warhorses per program, thank you, along with a manageable and brief contemporary work that won’t get in the way. You could also say that the sheer melodic genius of Barber and Bernstein gave audiences a set of familiar musical objects that would greet them warmly at every recurrence. (Barber’s Adagio for Strings is the ultimate example.) But you could say, too, that the mid-century America in which these composers wrote their finest works—the optimistic New Deal consensus that gave us victory over the Depression and the Axis, which carried us into the first wave of the civil-rights era, with its benchmark achievements—no longer exists. The nineteen-nineties, the decade of Clintonian peace and prosperity, which welcomed these pieces back, was a sunset, not a dawn.

One person who never got the message is the distinguished conductor Gerard Schwarz, now a free agent after long stints as the music director of the Seattle Symphony and the Mostly Mozart Festival, who has spent a lifetime advocating for the American symphonic school. He comes to Alice Tully Hall on Thursday night to conduct the Juilliard Symphony in the Fourth Symphony of Diamond, the Sixth Symphony of Schuman, and the Viola Concerto of Jacob Druckman, a younger contemporary of theirs who was Schuman’s successor as the most brilliant orchestral thinker of American composition, as well as its most powerful potentate.

I love this repertory, and Schwarz’s program led me to dive back into some favorite recordings. Let’s start with the Diamond Fourth (1945), as does Schwarz. Diamond was a complicated man but a straightforward composer, and his best work combines a rock-solid technique based in the music of Bach and Stravinsky with a direct and openhearted American mood. The Fourth’s divertimento-like first movement is affable and airy but driven and intense:

Schuman’s Sixth Symphony, a one-movement work of tragic breadth, was written in 1948, for the Dallas Symphony, just after the war that the Third Symphony’s appearance had heralded. But in the midst of the war he composed what, to me, is his finest symphony, and perhaps the most perfect one of the American canon, the Fifth (Symphony for Strings). Its slow second movement, which combines genuine elegy with angered vigor, is of shattering lyrical power; the vanishing of this piece from the stages of America’s major orchestras is truly bizarre. The classic recording is Leonard Bernstein’s, with the New York Philharmonic:

The entirely postwar career of Druckman (1928–96) marks the era when Americana composers had to face up to the challenge of international modernism, and the more cerebral worlds of Webern, Boulez, and late Stravinsky. Druckman, who trained at Juilliard and in Paris, and who spent the final decades of his prestigious academic career at the Yale School of Music, became a master of the new aesthetic but was never completely absorbed by it. Druckman’s great gift was his ability to infuse his modernist impulses with the gamut of sensuality, from the most delicate refinement to the utmost crudeness, in startlingly vivid instrumental hues. An album by the Philadelphia Orchestra, in glorious full gleam, on the New World Records label, features not only Druckman’s Viola Concerto (1978), a gripping and dramatic piece, but also “Counterpoise” (1994), a lovely orchestral song cycle that was his last major work. The extreme contrast between the texts that Druckman chose for the piece—two poems in English, by Emily Dickinson, and two more in French, by Guillaume Apollinaire—symbolize not only Druckman’s creative conflict but also the struggle of intellect and instinct that remains essential in American culture.