COMPOSERS: Stefan Wolpe
LABELS: Audivis Montaigne
WORKS: Piece for Two Instrumental Units
PERFORMER: Ensemble Recherche
CATALOGUE NO: MO 782048 DDD
The music of Stefan Wolpe (1902-72) has often seemed to me as dry as titles like Piece for Two Instrumental Units (1963) suggest. ‘For Stefan Wolpe’ makes clear, however, that this Berlin-born composer, who took refuge from Hitler in New York, could incorporate a wide range of reference into a severe, serial idiom. It also draws appropriate attention to his connections with Cage and Feldman, as well as with more obvious bedfellows such as Carter. Keith Potter