jmc's classics
This past Wednesday on "Exploring the Music with Bill McLaughlin" He featured American composer Roger Sessions (1896-1985). The week dealt with American composers who came of age in the early 20th century.
He was born in Brooklyn NY to a family that traced its roots to colonial America. His son John was an accomplished cellist. At age 14 Roger enrolled at Harvard. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1982 for his Concerto for Orchestra. Sessions was also a musicoligist, teacher and a music critic. he is mainly remembered as a composer. Sessions was friends with both German writer Thomas Mann And Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. His early works were in the neoclassical style. His later works were more tonal and serial. So he used different styles or techniques in writing. The later was an influence on Sessions and his music. Among his writings are nine symphonies, several chamber works including two sting quartets, woks for solo piano and solo cello an opera Montezuma. He also wrote songs. The opera is about the Aztec emperor. Americans are not known for their operas. The number of recordings of his works are limited. Usually only one or two each of his works. Most are usually by unknown orchestras. I hope that in the future more recordings of his works become available. This was a good series, It is available on line at wfmt.com. WFMT is a classical music station out of Chicago which is the producer of Exploring the Music.
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