Personalities | Roger Sessions | Modern Era | Classical
1896–1985
American composer
Influenced early in his career by Stravinsky and Bloch, whose teaching assistant he was in the early 1920s, and resident for some years in Europe (where he encountered Schoenberg’s music and witnessed the rise of Fascism), Sessions was regarded in the US as a more European than American composer. Though friendly with Copland (they organized a concert series together) he wrote disparagingly of ‘Americana’. He eventually adopted serialism, but his music (including two operas and eight symphonies) is in fact characteristically American in its tough, uningratiating honesty.
Recommended Recording:
Concerto for Orchestra, Boston SO (cond) Seiji Ozawa (Hyperion)
Introduction | Modern Era | Classical
Personalities | Dmitri Shostakovich | Modern Era | Classical
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