Monday, April 25, 2011

Another loss

Sad news came Saturday about the death of composer Peter Lieberson.  Much is being written about the composer, a most touching tribute is from Alex Ross:
Lieberson was a magician of harmony. He wrote with a rare combination of modernistic rigor and Romantic sensuality, the latter coming ever more to the fore in recent years. Among his major works are the First Piano Concerto, written for Peter Serkin; Drala, a sumptuous symphony in miniature; the opera Ashoka's Dream, which had its premiere in Santa Fe, in 1997; and the Neruda Songs, the last of which can be heard above. His father was Goddard Lieberson, the mighty president of Columbia Records, his mother the dancer Vera Zorina. He studied composition with the late Milton Babbitt, among others. He was also deeply versed in Tibetan Buddhism, and for a time ran a Buddhist meditation center in Nova Scotia. “What makes the human life so poignant is the recognition of its profound impermanence,’’ he told David Weininger last year.

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