BD: Does it surprise you that the new ideas are usually there?
LL: It’s different with each piece. Sometimes you really have to sit down and force an idea out of your head, and other times it just comes to you. The main theme of my Flute Concerto was written on a cocktail napkin at a bar after a couple of margaritas. That sort of thing usually almost never happens. It’s very rare.
BD: Did that one hold up later under the light of sobriety?
LL: Yes, it did. And I still have that cocktail napkin, actually.
BD: Do the ideas generally come from your head or do they come from your heart?
LL: Let’s not get into that debate! My head and my heart are not separate. They’re one bound whole.
BD: That’s the way to look at it, absolutely! Then let me ask, is the music that you write more art or more entertainment, and where is the balance?
LL: I guess one would have to define the difference between art and entertainment. To me, it’s more of a business thing. Entertainment is for money. One creates entertainment to make money. Art is theoretically and hopefully for a higher purpose. Entertainment to me is a much more passive thing for the audience. The audience members are passive, whereas art implies some kind of active, intellectual participation in what’s going on.
BD: It sounds like you demand that of your audience.
LL: Well, hopefully. And the best music, whether you’re talking about Mozart or Bach or Beethoven or Stravinsky or Bartók or Shostakovitch...
BD: [Interjecting] Or Lowell Liebermann?
LL: Well, I’d hopefully like to be in amongst those names. Hopefully, the best music can be appreciated on many levels by many different people of varying sophistication. One can listen to a Mozart piece for the pretty tunes, but then one can also listen in a more intellectual way and appreciate the construction and what’s going on technically. That’s what I do try and achieve in my music. I hope that there is a firm intellectual structure going on, that hopefully continues to reveal itself with repeated listenings. It can sometimes be a very complex structure, but on the surface it has something of beauty and of interest and of atmosphere that will capture the listeners and draw them in. When it comes down to it, I firmly believe in the need for a good tune, and that that is also one of the most difficult things for a composer to do. That sounds quite crass, but it’s true.
BD: Not really crass at all. This is something needed, especially as we’re getting back to music that can be listened to by audiences. Making a good tune is extremely difficult, and yet very rewarding when it’s done.
LL: Yeah. In fact, I was reading an issue of one of those terrible glossy British classical music magazines, and there was a young British composer who was being interviewed. He actually said that he was worried about his music being too tonal, until a friend of his challenged him to sing the main theme of his piece. He couldn’t, and was relieved!
BD: That’s very sad!
LL: Right, when a composer says that proudly, that’s very sad! That music has to be so contorted that it’s unmemorable and un-performable.
BD: I think that’s probably just an outgrowth of wanting to be different for different’s sake.
LL: Well, it’s a fear, and one sees that in the British music scene especially. Although they pretend to be on the forefront of what’s going on, they usually lag behind the trends on what’s going on in America. And they have such a complex about being intellectual and being on the cutting edge and not being conservative.
BD: But I think audiences are crying for this.
LL: Yeah, they are. They are.
BD: I’m glad that you are serving that end.
LL: It’s very gratifying to be sitting in the audience at one of my pieces, when there are people sitting next to you who don’t know who you are, and listening to their comments.
BD: Are they surprised when you walk up onstage and take a bow?
LL: Sometimes, and that can be very gratifying when you get really sincere reactions from people, and they like it!
BD: There’s where you should have your clone, but one that doesn’t look like you! It could wander around undetected!
LL: Well, one could try disguises. On the other hand, that might be dangerous! [Both laugh]
BD: You look vaguely like a TV actor.
LL: I have had so many people say that to me lately! Actually I’ve been mistaken for three or four different actors in the course of my life. At this flea market I used to go to, I got into a half-hour argument with one of the dealers who was convinced I was Jeff Daniels, who I don’t think I look at all like, really! But now I keep hearing that I look like the actor who’s in “Caroline in the City.”
BD: You’re just cursed with that kind of a face! [Both laugh again] One last question. Is composing fun?
LL: It can be. It can also be very difficult, very frustrating and very agonizing because when you are composing, you really are wrestling with aesthetic issues, and if you’re really concerned about what you’re doing, they become moral issues. And it’s very hard work and very concentrated. It’s solitary work, but yes, it can be fun. The work that I wrote that was the most fun was actually the opera, even though physically and in terms of hours it was the most arduous task.
BD: I wonder if it’s because of the text.
LL: The text removes so much of the blindness that you have when you’re creating a piece. You usually have to create the format out of nothing, but when you have your libretto, you always know where you’re going. It doesn’t necessarily give you the musical form, but it gives you the whole emotional framework. In that way, it’s this very freeing thing to be working with an opera. And it’s very different than writing a song, for some reason. A song is usually such a short form and you have to be very focused; the emphasis becomes on the moment-to-moment thing rather than the large-scale sweep. It’s a very different thing. When you have the big, grand sweep of an opera, you know this scene is about this and you’re going to that. Somehow that’s a very liberating thing.
BD: I would think it would be like having a guide, but not a dogma.
LL: Yeah.
BD: I wish you lots of continued success!
LL: Thank you!
From http://www.lowellliebermann.com/: Lowell Liebermann is one of America's most frequently performed and recorded living composers. Called by the New York Times "as much of a traditionalist as an innovator." Mr. Liebermann's music is known for its technical command and audience appeal. Having written over one hundred works in all genres, several of them have gone on to become standard repertoire for their instruments, including his Sonata for Flute and Piano, which has been recorded more than twenty times to date, and his Gargoyles for Piano, which has been recorded fifteen times.
Mr. Liebermann has written two full-length operas, both of which were enthusiastically received at their premieres. His first, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was the only American opera to be commissioned and premiered by Monte Carlo Opera. His second opera Miss Lonelyhearts, to a libretto by JD McClatchy after the novel by Nathanael West, was commissioned by the Juilliard School to celebrate its 100th anniversary.
Among his orchestral works, Mr. Liebermann has composed two Symphonies - the Second, with chorus, written for the centennial of the Dallas Symphony; a Concerto for Orchestra; three Piano Concertos; and Concertos for many other instruments. Piano Concerto No.3 was commissioned for pianist Jeffrey Biegel by a consortium of eighteen different orchestras both here and abroad. Stephen Hough and the Indianapolis Symphony performed Liebermann's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which the orchestra commissioned to celebrate Raymond Leppard's farewell concert as conductor. His Violin Concerto was commissioned and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra with violinist Chantal Juillet, and conducted by Charles Dutoit. The New York Philharmonic and principal trumpet Philip Smith presented the premiere of Mr. Liebermann's Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, which the Wall Street Journal described as "balancing bravura and a wealth of attractive musical ideas to create a score that invites repeated listening. [Liebermann] is a masterful orchestrator, and just from this standpoint the opening of the new concerto is immediately arresting," also noting that the "rousing conclusion brought down the house."
In the realm of chamber music, Mr. Liebermann has composed four string quartets - the two most recent for the Ying and Orion Quartets respectively; four Cello Sonatas; two Piano Trios; Sonatas for Flute, Violin, Viola, Flute and Harp; and works for many other combinations
A pianist himself, Mr. Liebermann has written a wealth of music for the solo instrument, much of which frequently appears on concert and competition programs. Mr. Liebermann was awarded the very first American Composers' Invitational Award by the 11th Van Cliburn Competition after the majority of finalists chose to perform his Three Impromptus, which were selected from works submitted by forty-two contemporary composers. In an interview with newscaster Sam Donaldson, Van Cliburn described Mr. Liebermann as “a wonderful pianist and a fabulous composer.”
© 1998 Bruce Duffie
This interview was recorded in Chicago on August 15, 1998. Portions (along with recordings) were used on WNIB in 1999, and on both WNUR and Contemporary Classical Internet Radio in 2009.
Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.
Used by permission.