Contemporary Classics August 5, 2025 Five Composers Who Died During the First of 2025

Tonight on Contemporary Classics we are remembering 5 composers among those who died during the first half of this year.  

Per Norgard was a highly influential Danish composer who is considered the most important Danish composer since Carl Nielsen.  His early compositions were influenced by the Nordic styles of Jan Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, and Vagn Holmboe.  However he is most known for his adventurous and individualistic style of serialism known as the infinity series of composition.  He wrote operas, orchestra and concertante works, chamber music and music for solo instruments.  Norgard died after a long illness at a senior citizens' home in Copenhagen, on May 28th, at the age of 92.

One of his most important works was I Ching for solo percussion written in 1982, written for the Danish percussionist Gert Mortensen.   Here is a performance of the first three movements of this work:I. Thunder Repeated, The Image of Shock; II. The Taming Power of the Small - 9 Sounds and III. The Gentle, the Penetrating by Gert Sorensen from the album Norgard: A Drummer’s Tale, Episode 1        Dacapo

Per Norgard: I. Thunder Repeated, The Image of Shock
Per Norgard: II. The Taming Power of the Small - 9 Sounds
Per Norgard: III. The Gentle, the Penetrating


Ilkka Kuusisto was a prominent Finnish composer known for his operas, orchestral works, and chamber music.  Early in his career he was an organist and choral master, but his inspiration to become a composer came when he discovered jazz.  In addition to his concert music he was a prolific jazz composer, which he always considered to be just a hobby.  He was part of a three generation musical family.  His father was composer Taneli Kuusisto and his sons are violinists, conductors and composers, Jaakko and Pekka Kuusisto

He served in production and administrative roles in music radio and opera companies, including as the managing director of the Finnish National Opera.   Perhaps his most famous work was his children’s opera Moominooppera.  Critics were skeptical, but children loved it. Kuusisto did a lot of work to make music more accessible: he composed catchy children's songs and tried to make opera more widely available for the enjoyment of the whole nation.  He died on February 20th, at the age of 91

But I want to share with you one of his most important orchestral works, his Concertino improvvisando for violin & small orchestra  composed in 2006.  This was recorded in 2010 in a recording that was a family affair.  It features his son Pekka Kuusisto on violin and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, conducted by his other son Jaakko Kuusisto.  This recording can be found on the album Ilkka Kuusisto: Orchestral Works    BIS Records

Let’s close this first hour of Contemporary Classics remembering composers who died during the first half of this year by listening to music of İlhan Usmanbaş who is considered one of the most prominent of the "second generation" of Turkish composers, who integrated European techniques into Turkish music.  He was born in Istanbul on 23 October 1921.  His early studies in music was at the Conservatory of Istanbul and the Ankara State Conservatory.  But he came to the United States  twice, first in 1952 on a UNESCO scholarship, where he came under the influence of American pioneers of new and experimental music and studied at Tanglewood, and second in 1957 to 1958, on a Rockefeller fellowship, where he had the opportunity to meeting study with composers Milton Babbitt, Henry Cowell and Morton  Feldman.  Until the late 1940s, he was influenced by Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky. However in the 1950s under the influence of the American avant garde, he added serial techniques and in the 1960s he incorporated aleatoric music, free polyphony, sound collage, minimal music, monorhythms and micromodality into his music.  İlhan Usmanbaş died in Istanbul on January 30 the at the age of 103. 

Today we will feature his Music for Cello and Piano No 1 and No 2 as performed by the cello and piano duo of Dilbağ Tokay & Emine Serdaroğlu from the album Turkish Music for Cello and Piano  Naxos

İlhan Usmanbaş:  Music for Cello and Piano No 1
İlhan Usmanbaş:  Music for Cello and Piano No 2

We open this second hour of Contemporary Classics remembering composers who died during the first half of this year with American composer Richard Wernick.  Wernick was born on January 16, 1934 in Boston, Massachusetts.  He showed early promise on the piano and music theory so his high school music theory teacher took notice of his abilities, and introduced him to Irving Fine, who was a composition professor at Harvard University at the time.  Wernick went on to complete his undergraduate studies with Fine at Brandeis University. While at Brandeis, Wernick also studied with Harold Shapero, Arthur Berger, and Leonard Bernstein. He became a Tanglewood fellow and studied composition with Aaron Copland, and conducting with Leonard Bernstein.  Wernick spent much of his career as a composition professor, teaching at SUNY Buffalo and  University of Chicago However, his longest tenure was at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1968 to 1996.  During the 1970s he was as part of the university's composition "triumvirate" with George Crumb, and George Rochberg).  He died on April 25th at the age of 91 just outside of Philadelphia.

Among his many awards, Wernick won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition Visions of Terror and Wonder.   Unfortunately I could find no recordings of this work so tonight I am playing his String Quartet No. 4 from 1990 which is in two movements:  I. Introduction and Allegro and II. which is in 6 parts Scherzo I (homage to A.D.) -  Arioso I - Scherzo II - Arioso II - Scherzo I - Epilogue.  Here is a performance by the Emerson String Quartet from their album American Contemporaries
Deutsche Grammophon

Richard Wernick: String Quartet No. 4 - I. Introduction and Allegro 
Richard Wernick: String Quartet No. 4 - II. which is in 6 parts Scherzo I (homage to A.D.) -  Arioso I - Scherzo II - Arioso II - Scherzo I - Epilogue.


I a closing this episode of Contemporary Classics honoring composers who passed away during the first half of this year withSofia Gubaidulina.   Gubaidulina is one of the most important Russian composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, known for her deeply spiritual and expressive music. Her output has been described as exploring the tensions between Western and Eastern music, and has been characterised by "innovative use of microtonality and chromaticism, rhythm over form and use of contrasting tonalities.”

Her compositions have been praised for their "emotional intensity", while she described her music “as bringing legato, that is, a sense of connected flow into the fragmented staccato of life.”  Gubaidulina was born on October  24, 1931 in Chistopol, Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - now the Republic of Tatarstan.  She discovered music at the age of five and began piano studies and writing short pieces of music.  She studied at the Kazan Conservatory and the Moscow Conservatory.  During her studies, Western contemporary music was almost entirely banned from study, an exception being the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Raids took place in the dormitory halls, where searches were conducted for banned scores, with those by Stravinsky being the most infamous and sought after. Gubaidulina and her peers procured and studied modern Western scores nonetheless, and she later said that "we knew Ives, Cage, we actually knew everything on the sly.”

Gubaidulina struggled to get her career going as her music was deemed "irresponsible" and “mistaken" in Soviet Russia, due to its exploration of alternative tunings. She was supported by Dmitri Shostakovich, who in evaluating one of her exams encouraged her to continue on her path despite the criticism by others.  In the 1980s her music was praised and promoted by many western musicians which turned her career around.  

In 2021 her music was specifically mentioned in the New York Times article “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Symphonies”.  Gubaidulina died from acute heart failure at her home in Appen, Germany on 13 March, at the age of 93.  The next day the Hilton Head international Piano Competition which included a work by her by a competitor dedicated that evening performances to her memory.

Let’s close by listening to two of her works - first her Bassoon Concerto.  It is in 4 movements:

Sofia Gubaidulina:  Bassoon Concerto   I. Quarter Note = 84
Sofia Gubaidulina:  Bassoon Concerto   II. Quarter Note = 60
Sofia Gubaidulina:  Bassoon Concerto   III.  Tempo unmarked
Sofia Gubaidulina:  Bassoon Concerto   IV. Half Note = 76
Sofia Gubaidulina:  Bassoon Concerto   V.  Tempo unmarked

Valeri Popov, bassoon with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pyotr Meshchaninov
Gubaidulina: Bassoon Concerto / Duo Sonata / Quasi Hoquetus
Chandos Records

And we close with two preludes for solo double bass from her 10 preludes for double bass entitled Ricochet as performed by Danielle Roccato from the album Sophia Gubaidulina: In Croce

You have been listening to two preludes for solo double bass from her 10 preludes for double bass entitled Ricochet as performed by Danielle Roccato from the album Sophia Gubaidulina: In Croce    Wergo

Thank you for joining me tonight on Contemporary Classics and join me again next Tuesday at 8pm when I return to my conversations with composers and/or performers of 21st century concert music.