Word: lucas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...destroyed so much of his early work "to get all that modernist dirt out of my system." But it was abstraction that underwrote the system of Benton's later figurative paintings -- an abstraction based on bulging, serpentine figures derived from Michelangelo. From him, and from mannerist sources like Luca Cambiaso's block figures and El Greco's twisty saints, Benton assembled the theory of kinetic composition that would eventually alter the walls of the Midwest. It would alter abstract painting itself, since his preoccupation with surge and flow got across to Pollock and, much etherealized, led to Pollock's invention...
...work by Hugh Aitken, while in Montreal, Stern contributed the North American premiere of French Composer Henri Dutilleux's impressionistic concerto. The same month Virtuoso Shlomo Mintz played Marc Neikrug's neoromantic concerto for the second time, having presented its world premiere in 1984. And this week Sergiu Luca will give the American premiere of William Bolcom's frisky new concerto in Pittsburgh (he introduced it in 1984 in Saarbrucken, West Germany...
...terrible to live under the onus of playing only masterpieces," says Luca, who has a small one in the Bolcom. "If I am able to enjoy the work and can convince someone else that it is enjoyable, then it's worth playing...
...mournful tune Bolcom heard whistled on the New York City subway and a riotous finale that is an homage to the late jazz fiddler Joe Venuti. Bright and accessible, the concerto is steeped in a popular idiom. "You don't have to tell people what it means," observes Luca, who is Rumanian born and Israeli raised. "The wonderful thing about playing it is that it is analogous to Mozart playing his works in Vienna. It is part of the lingo...
...ephemeral, so what? Tastes change, and each generation has the right to its own repertoire, if only it will exercise it. Classical music need not be so unrelentingly obsessed with its place in history. "Think of forgotten music that was played in the past with gusto and pleasure," says Luca, perhaps recalling the ghosts of Spontini and Spohr. "I am willing to take a chance that someone down the road will decide one day not to play the piece." And instead of a war-horse, play something...