ABOUT

LEON KIRCHNER, COMPOSER

Kirchner is outstanding for his impassioned conviction and intellectual courage…He belongs to no one school and he writes for no one audience, he simply gives what is in his heart and what is in his head- and it is deeply moving, deeply challenging…The more one listens the more one discovers a firm design in the bewilderingly rich and emotionally vibrant substance of his music. – Robert Sabin/Musical America

Leon Kirchner, born in Brooklyn of Russian parents, grew up in Los Angles. A modernist who ascribed to a romantic tenet, Kirchner wrote “An artist must create a personal cosmos, a verdant world in continuity with tradition, further fulfilling man’s “awareness,” his “degree of consciousness,” and bringing new subtilization, vision and beauty to the elements of experience.” Remaining stylistically independent as a composer, never adopting serial techniques, Kirchner studied with formidable mentors, Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions, and Ernest Bloch. He was recipient of Guggenheim and American Academy of Rome fellowships; Friedheim, New York Music Critics Circle, Naumburg, and Kennedy Center awards; the Pulitzer Prize in music; the American Academy of Arts and Letters gold medal; and honorary doctorates from Harvard University and the Peabody and New England conservatories. A formidable pianist and revelatory conductor, revered as teacher and coach, Kirchner was composer-in-residence and performer at Tanglewood Music Center, Tokyo Music Today (Takemitsu Festival); and the Spoleto (Charleston), Aldeburgh, Santa Fe Chamber, and Marlboro Music festivals. Kirchner received commissions from the Ford, Fromm, and Koussevitzky Foundations; the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, St. Paul Chamber and Boston Symphony orchestras; the Spoleto and Santa Fe Chamber Music festivals; the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. He composed works for Yo-Yo Ma, the Orion Quartet, Paula Robison, Joel Fan, Peter Serkin, Carter Brey, and Leon Fleisher. At Harvard, Kirchner directed the Harvard Chamber Players, which included emerging students and seasoned professionals. He then cofounded and directed the Harvard Chamber Orchestra— comprised of Boston’s preeminent freelancers and consistently acclaimed for imaginative and wide-ranging programs of baroque to contemporary music. Soloists who appeared with the orchestra included Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Peter Serkin, and Leon Fleisher. Following his opera Lily, and Lily for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble, Kirchner composed his Emily Dickinson song cycle, The Twilight Stood, a “mini-opera” and virtuoso duo for soprano and piano which he later transformed into a piano solo work, Five Pieces. Kirchner is exclusively published by Associated Music Publishers, Inc. (BMI). —Verdant World Productions