Stefan Wolpe was a composer who cut a Zelig-like path through the early twentieth century. Starting out in Ferruccio Busoni's master class, he ended up pounding piano in Weimar-era cabarets, fled to Palestine, and then to America, where he turned up at Black Mountain College in time to impact the work of John Cage and Morton Feldman. In the 1960s, his music was paired on a CRI album with that of the young George Crumb and the work of the near-septuagenarian Wolpe sounded in no way less contemporary than his then 30 ...
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Stefan Wolpe was a composer who cut a Zelig-like path through the early twentieth century. Starting out in Ferruccio Busoni's master class, he ended up pounding piano in Weimar-era cabarets, fled to Palestine, and then to America, where he turned up at Black Mountain College in time to impact the work of John Cage and Morton Feldman. In the 1960s, his music was paired on a CRI album with that of the young George Crumb and the work of the near-septuagenarian Wolpe sounded in no way less contemporary than his then 30-something colleague. That Wolpe's music was forgotten after he died is probably not an accident of history, as during his lifetime he was never "famous" so much as respected by his peers and, to some extent, copied by them. Since about 2000, Wolpe is back with a vengeance, largely through the efforts of musicologist Austin Clarkson and the Stefan Wolpe Society. Naxos' Stefan Wolpe: The Man from Midian makes available once again some of the first recorded salvos fired on Wolpe's behalf in the...
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