Roger Sessions, Symphony No. 8 i. Adagio e mesto, New Philharmonia, Frederik Prausnitz

Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. He studied music at Harvard University from the age of 14. There he wrote for and subsequently edited the Harvard Musical Review. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at Yale University under Horatio Parker and Ernest Bloch before teaching at Smith College. His first major compositions came while he was travelling Europe with his wife in his mid-twenties and early thirties.

Returning to the United States in 1933, he taught first at Princeton University, moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1946 to 1954, and then returned to Princeton until retiring in 1965, although he continued to teach on a part-time basis at the Juilliard School until 1983.

His notable students include John Adams, Milton Babbitt, Elmer Bernstein, Larry Thomas Bell, Robert Black, Donald Bohlen, Edward T. Cone, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, David Del Tredici, Alan Fletcher, Kenneth Frazelle, Carlton Gamer, Miriam Gideon, John Harbison, Walter Hekster, Robert Helps, Andrew Imbrie, Earl Kim, Fred Lerdahl, David Lewin, William Mayer, Roger Nixon, Will Ogdon, Claire Polin, Einojuhani Rautavaara, William Schimmel, George Tsontakis, John Veale, Henry Weinberg, Peter Westergaard, Rolv Yttrehus and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

His works written up to 1930 or so are more or less neoclassical in style. Those written between 1930 and 1951 are more or less tonal but harmonically complex. From the Solo Violin Sonata of 1953 on, he wrote almost exclusively in a serial style.

Roger Sessionss Symphony No. 8, composed in 1968, is dedicated to his daughter Elizabeth. The work is in two compact movements that are joined together without a pause between them. Particularly notable about the opening is the use of maracas, bereft of their customary ethnicity, to provide quiet, sizzling accompaniment to a melody that begins high and features notes that are widely spaced. This striking passage frames the entire work, coming as it does at the end of the second movement. It makes one other brief appearance near the end of the first movement. The tragic tone of that first movement, solemn and dirge-like, gives way to virile exuberance in the faster tempo of the second movement. Throughout, the idiom is richly chromatic; musical space is articulated at its limits by tuba and contrabassoon below and piccolo and glockenspiel above. Andrew Imbrie has written of the rhythmic aspects of this work, calling particular attention to its metrical freedom. The music surges forward despite a complex network of counterpoint.
This rare recording by the New Philharmonia Orchestra under Frederik Prausnitz was issued privately by the Gulbenkian Foundation on LP in approximately 1972.

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[SirFrone]

his piano sonata no.3 is one of the best compositions i have ever heard!

[Riceking555]

Roger's music is truly wonderful, but, like so many, relegated to the dark shadows of music history. As a teacher he influenced a whole generation of important figures that went on to spread the love of music he gave them.

[labbus]

Stunning music and performance. I can't remember last time music brought tears to my eyes like this. Thank you! (and for the superb, tasteful 'visualization', as usual)