Eagle Minds: Selected Correspondence of Istvan Anhalt and George Rochberg (1961-2005)

1986

| 185 101 3 april 1986 My dear Isty, I hope the cassette of [Symphony] #5 has reached you by now; and once you’ve had a chance to “assimilate” it, you’ll let me know your reaction . I spent the 2 weeks following our return home recuperating. I was really exhausted, not so much from the musical side of the week in Chicago—that always has its tensions & pressures inevitably—as from the constant need to relate to the sideshow set in motion by the fact of the premiere1 itself: interviews, a meeting with critics following the Wed. rehearsals (wouldn’t have made it through that talk session without the help of a long bourbon), a reception at the office of Hizonor, the mayor of Chicago [ … ] and various & sundry champagne receptions following both performances. After all these years, being “wined & dined” is really not my style at all—but the “musical life” of our times seems to insist on being more & more social. [ … ] Solti proved to be every inch the man & musician I have come to regard so highly. He was enormously sympathetic to the work, was quite generous with his praise privately & time professionally. The fact that I am not entirely satisfied with his performance takes nothing away from my feeling for him. We had about 3–4 hrs. of rehearsals including the dress run-through, no more—for the most simple of reasons: I had to prepare 2 programs that week, the concert with [Symphony] #5 Thurs. & Sat. and a Tchaikovsky concert Friday night!! How does one even get used to the maddeningly brief time available to prepare a new work? One doesn’t— or I should say, I can’t. When I express dissatisfaction with his way of doing 1986 [Symphony] #5, I refer mainly to the tempo of the 5/8 section which is just under what it should be and consequently becomes too pesante & the fact that he doesn’t allow the slow sections greater expansiveness and elasticity. Despite these flaws, it came off coherently and convincingly. The orchestra responded enthusiastically—always a pleasure when the people who play your music say out loud they like it—and the audience gave it a good reception. While “recuperating” I entered those corrections & changes I felt absolutely essential for greater presence & clarity where needed (in the tissues)—so now it is behind me. What I long for, since we’re never really finished with a work until we hear it in its most ideal sense, is another performance—maybe next year—which will come as close as possible to the ideal. Meanwhile, now that I feel some energy again & the old noodle is beginning to perk a little, I’m circling around ideas for [Symphony] #6 which will be another Geschichte entirely. Someone expressed to me his feeling that the same spirit animates [Symphony] #5 that animates [Symphony] #2. Fine; & probably not a bad insight because both are compressed, hot, concentrated works. But [Symphony] #6 will be in 4 movements which already tells you something.2 Wider range of gestures, a different orchestral palette, looser in a way. I hope work on & involving Winthrop goes well & not too taxing. As the man said, “I don’t buy green bananas anymore.” [ … ] George 102 20 april 1986 Dear George, What a powerful and gripping work your 5th [Symphony]! A tremendous opening, literally, like a wound torn open, or like a sustained wailing over the telling (no: showing) of something that has taken (or is taking) place … A work of enormous lines, sustained by whatever gave you the endurance to envisage it and put it on paper. Then the lyricism that told me of another inner song of yours, echoing what I retain of the Oboe Concerto, suggesting to me, my dear friend, that you are closer to Wittgenstein’s Vienna then I ever was, though, at times, I have felt (and am still fancying) a close kinship to it. (How unbridgeably far that world was from the Budapest years of, say 1937–42 …) But back to your 5th … (yes it is a fifth, responding to whatever one would feel obliges one to say something about weighty matters … Are we thus retracing a mental/developmental tract blazed by that giant that still dares one, as if saying: Part IV: Politics, Religion, and Society (1986–2000) 186 | “… and you think you could open your mouth? What do you propose to say?” Well, you’ve taken him...