aworks :: "new" american classical music

The Cradle Will Rock (1936). Marc Blitzstein

A 1938 Time Magazine review (subscription) of a recording of The Cradle Will Rock:

What was vastly effective as musical scene painting is noisy & facile as music pure & simple.

Piano Percussion Music (1929). Marc Blitzstein

In the Financial Times, Allan Ulrich reviews the Marc Blitzstein Centenary Celebration at last week's Other Minds Festival and describes Piano Percussion Music:

In Sarah Cahill's committed performance, the West Coast premiere of the unpublished 1929 Piano Percussion Music heralded a sophisticated musician, attuned to the emotive power of dissonance, the imitative capabilities of the traditional keyboard, a grounding in ornamentation and, in the repeated closing of the keyboard cover, a taste for the dadaist flourishes of the day.

Ulrich makes it sound fun and interesting. Regular readers may notice I have been fascinated by the piano music of the Twenties (and soon the Thirties). Lastly, Alex Ross mentions the historical importance of Blitzstein's music and how it reflected the "strange soul" of America during those times.