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After graduation from the University of Minnesota, and Dorati's departure from Minneapolis, with my Guggenheim grants finished, life became a big question mark. While driving back to New York I stopped for gas in a small city in upstate New York, and rad a newspaper announcement that on that same evening the local orchestra was auditioning conductors. With spirit of adventure, I called to ask if it was still possible to apply. The audition was successful, and I became the music director of the Utica Symphony, a semi-professional orchestra. The position in Utica was so underpaid that the only housing I could afford was a little room at the YMCA. I think my salary was $2000 per year. The position came as a package with a part-time Assistant Professor job at the local college to teach violin and composition, which paid some additional sum. This school, part of Syracue University, used makeshift classrooms, and was new and poor, but at least I had my own office, and a school library room where I could compose. It was in this school library/cafeteria that I wrote every note of my Fantasia for String Quartet. The noise and the constant chatter failed to distract me. I enjoyed writing this piece, which I did on commission from the Harvard Musical Association in Massachusetts. During my last months in Minneapolis, Mr. Dorati told me that he had noticed an announcement that this association had a compoetition to commission a string quartet. I applied for it and won the contest. The prize money was quite small, but it included a premiere by members of the Boston Symphony, at the Harvard Musical Association's beautiful salons at Harvard. The premiere, in the spring of 1961 was a wonderful event. The next time it was played was in Washington DC at the Inter-American Music Festival. I was unable to attend, but was amused by the Washington Post's review which declared it an instant "hit," "a veritable 1812 of string quartets." That was not what I had in mind at all, but I was delighted that it had communicated so well. Later, Wladimir Lakond, the editor at Peer Music suggested a string orchestra version of it, with doublebasses added, and he published both versions. As time passes, I still feel very close to this piece which just poured out of my pen in less than a week.
After a short introduction that sets the mood, a folk-like melody of melancholy nature is followed by a persistent solo violin that uses unexpected melodic and harmonic structures. This recurrent solo, a sort of devil's trill, is purposely out of place. Its closest "cousin" would be the solo violin in Mahler's Fourth Symphony (however, I did know this work at the time). The music goes back and forth in a truly improvisatory manner that justified the title. The closest if comes to a set form is the recapitulation of the solo violin section, which leads to an unexpected, driven coda. This ending may come as a surprise, since the bulk of the piece is so lyrical. The title has to do with the free form of the piece, but it was also a kind of homage to Stokowski/Disney's wonderful film. When I wrote Fantasia I had not yet started to work with Stokowski in New York (that would come 18 months later), but he had already premeired two of my works.
I had only taken a few violing lessons when I began writing the first segments of the sonata. At the time I had no idea what a sonata was, nor any other musical form, or key-relationships, or anything else about music theory. he piece evolved purely out of intuition. Many years later, after it was published, I was surprised to hear that somebody at a university in Texas had made a special analysis of it, which went on for many pages, discussing the formal structure and the key-relationships. This essay was published in 1965. There are indeed some things that can be analyzed, as an afterthought. The opening melodic line, which recurs from time to time, has a modal quality. The piece seems to evolve naturally, developing a form of its own, like a well-planned improvisation. The "appoggiatura" over a major-7th chord, which becomes a recurring element, would later become almost obsessive in many of my early works. The piece is very difficult to perform, making virtuosic demands at every stage. I quoted extensively from this sonata in my Winter Violin Concerto, more than forty years later, to tie a full circle between my earliest and my most recent work for the violin.
The genesis of this piece goes back to 1991 when I was commissioned to write a violin concerto. The concerto had to be the last piece of a puzzle, a violinist's idea to record the four seasons—not Vivaldi's, but by four 20th-century composers. We had Rodrigo's Summer Concerto, Milhaud's Spring Concerto, and eventually we found an Autumn, a salon piece for violin by Chaminade. I was asked to write a winter concerto to complete the cycle. The concept and form of the work evolved, rather ironically, while walking on the beautiful white sand beaches of Key Biscaine, Florida, at Christmas that year. I had never meanto to portray literally the season of winter. My winter concerto would have to be a poetic vision of winter, not so much the actual season but the winter of life, the time approaching death, when presumably all memories come back in a flash; when reality, futility, purpose, memories all mix in a mocking parade, a never-ending dream.
I couldn't write it fast enough. It was my first large-scale orchestral work in several decades, but I seemed to take off where I had left before. There was a major change in approach. Thanks to the more open times, I now felt free to write as I felt. The Violin Concerto was played in New York, Miami, London, and Madrid within a short time, and published both by Peer Music and by Kalmus. It was recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
From the start I felt that the concert contained the roots of a purely symphonic piece, a short impulsive utterance based on the same idea. When Reference Recordings approached me with the plan to do a recording of my music, I went back to that initiative, and produced a Winter's Journey, the title I gave it originally. To give it Schubert's title was daring, but in time the piece became Winterriese, like some people's names become them. In fact the piece quotes almost every composer but Schubert. Towards the climax of the piece, the first quote is from Haydn("Winter" from The Seasons), which has a mysterious ambience. Then a heroic quote from Glazunov("Winter" from The Seasons) in counterpoint with Tchaikovsky's First Symphony, "Winter Dreams". Eventually, all three tunes appear together. If one listens carefully, the Dies Irae can also be heard towards the end, evolving naturally from the Haydn quote.
The piece is like a train ride, when one rides backwards and all images fly by slightly distorted, never to return. All the trees are covered with snow andt he lakes are frozen. Icicles cling to the train's windows. There is no sky; everything seems blinding white.
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