George Rochberg

Rochberg: “Music for the Magic Theater.” New World Records. (48:41) ★★★★

The two chamber works on this New World recording by Stephen Rogers Radcliffe and the New York Chamber Ensemble offer an interesting look at George Rochberg’s singular brand of modernism. It’s not music for the unadventurous, but it’s by no means inaccessible.

Taking its name from the “Magic Theater” in Steppenwolf, the Hermann Hesse novel, “Music for the Magic Theater” is a sound collage of sorts from 1965 in which Rochberg reexamines the music of the past and the present. Over the course of three “acts” there are musical quotations from Mozart’s K. 287 Divertimento; Beethoven’s Op. 130 String Quartet; Mahler’s Ninth Symphony; Webern; Varèse; Stockhausen; Miles Davis’ “Stella by Starlight”; and Rochberg’s own Second String Quartet. Act 1 juxtaposes Mozart with austere and dissonant modernism; Act 2 is mostly Mozart, Mahler and melodic; Act 3 is a return to our century’s tonal austerity, with a searching, ambiguous and quiet ending.

“Music for the Magic Theater” is scored for a 13-piece chamber ensemble. Also on this disc is Rochberg’s Octet: A Grand Fantasia from 1980, which is scored for flute, clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello, bass and piano. Consisting of 12 short sections, the Octet gets off to a fast and gruff beginning but gives way to mostly slow and medium-slow tempos.