The Hopkins Center for the Performing Arts and the music department will hold a concert tomorrow night to recognize composer, scholar and Music Professor Christian Wolff for his 25 years as a member of the Dartmouth faculty.
The event, billed as "The Christian Wolff 25th Anniversary Concert," will feature leading interpreters of new music who will perform Wolff's works tomorrow at 8 p.m. in Rollins Chapel.
The concert is the centerpiece of a three-day symposium titled "Christian Wolff: The Composer and the Classicist, A Symposium and Music Festival" to celebrate Wolff's works.
The symposium kicks off today from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. with a welcoming address by Dean of the Faculty James Wright. Robert Morgan, a music professor at Yale University, will then give an introductory lecture in Faulkner Recital Hall.
Then from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m., there will be a reception following the lecture in the Faculty Lounge at the Top of the Hop.
But tomorrow night's concert will allow the community to recognize Wolff's achievements. College President James Freedman will give the welcoming address.
These three widely acclaimed performers of music will include pianist Ursula Oppens, who performed at the Hopkins Center in the fall, composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky.
Also performing will be violinist Malcolm Goldstein, valve trombonist Don Glasgo and Wolff himself, who will join Rzewski in "Duo For Pianists II", a work composed for two pianos in 1958.
Wolff will also play percussion and the melodica, joining all the musicians in selections from "Exercises," an instrumental work composed in 1973-75.
The program highlights will include "Two Pianists," a work composed for two pianos in 1993-94 to be played by Oppens and Rzewski, "Rosas," a work for piano and percussion composed in 1989-90 as a tribute to civil rights figure Rosa Parks and the late German socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg to be performed by Rzewski and Schulkowsky.
Other highlights are "Percussionist Songs," a percussion solo composed in 1994-95 premiered by Schulkowsky last March in Stockholm, and "For Piano I," a piano solo composed in 1952.
In an American Record Guide review of the most recent recording of Wolff's compositions, "Bread and Roses: Works for Piano 1976-1983" (Mode Records 1995), a collection of piano works performed by pianist Sally Pinkas, critic Mark L. Lehman described Wolff as a "quietly brilliant and brilliantly quiet composer."
The review continues, "Wolff's piano 'Preludes' are quite simply among the most unusual and fascinating piano pieces of the second half of our century..."
Lehman referred to the pieces as "astonishing and indescribable," and wrote, "They encompass glowing chordal harmonies, chromatic but flowing counterpoint, abstract quasi-baroque jazz, and calmly meandering Ivesian meditation, without ever once trying to seem 'impressive' or beautiful."
Admission to the concert is $10.50 for general admission seats and $2 for those holding Dartmouth IDs.
Following the concert at 10:00 p.m. there will be a reception in the Hayward Lounge of the Hanover Inn to which students, faculty and guests are invited.
Other events in the symposium are free of charge. Tomorrow there will be two panel discussions in the Faculty Lounge: "Performing the Music of Christian Wolff" moderated by Music Professor Jon Appleton from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., and "Christian Wolff's Music and Its Influences," moderated by Music Professor Larry Polansky from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m.
Then on Wednesday, Classics Professor James Tatum will moderate a panel discussion titled "Christian Wolff and the Classics: Close Reading, Feminism, Euripides," from 10:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
From 12:30 to 1:15 p.m. Rzewski will perform his original composition of "Fougues" and "De profundis" and other works in Faulkner Recital Hall.
Other events will include lunches with students and various receptions.
