© Rinchen Lhamo
Born: 1946
"When Peter Lieberson began composing in the early 1970s, his compositional hero was Stravinsky in his late acerbic style, and his teachers included Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen. But he was also fond of musical theater, Minimalism and jazz; before he studied composition formally, he learned about harmony by figuring out the voicings on recordings by the jazz pianist Bill Evans. Mr. Lieberson’s works meld most of those influences into a cohesive, energetic and intensely communicative style, with brainy, atonal surfaces that attest to his post-tonal pedigree and a current of lyricism and drama that gives this music its warmth and passion."
-- Allan Kozinn, NY Times, September 29, 2009
Brief Biography:
Peter Lieberson came to prominence in the mid-1980s with the Piano Concerto and Drala, two major commissions from the Boston Symphony, with whom he still enjoys a fruitful collaboration. Of profound influence on his music has been his practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Since 1980 many of his works have been inspired by Buddhist themes such as King Gesar (1991) and the opera Ashoka’s Dream (1997), both from a series of works based on the lives of enlightened rulers. Lyricism and vocal writing dominate his works of the last decade, reflecting the rich collaborations with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson for whom he composed Neruda Songs (winner of the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition). In addition to his associations with major orchestras such as Boston, New York, Cleveland, Chicago and Los Angeles, Lieberson enjoys long-standing artistic collaborations with Peter Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and Oliver Knussen. Recent commissions include The World in Flower for the New York Philharmonic, Remembering Schumann for Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, The Coming of Light, a new song cycle for baritone, oboe, and string quartet, the orchestral Suite from Ashoka's Dream, and Songs of Love and Sorrow for Gerald Finley and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His music is published exclusively by Associated Music Publishers. For a complete biography, click here.
Key Works:- Drala
(1986; orchestra) - Raising the Gaze
(1988; ensemble) - Ashoka's Dream
(1997; opera) - Red Garuda
(1999; piano, orchestra) - Neruda Songs
(2005; mezzo soprano, orchestra) - The World in Flower
(2007; mezzo soprano, baritone, chorus, orchestra)
| Career Highlights:- 1973 Awared Ives Scholarship from the National Institute of Arts and Letters
- 1985 Received Opus Magazine's Contemporary Music Award for a recording of Piano Concerto
- 1984-88 Professor at Harvard University
- 2000 World premiere of Ashoka's Dream at Santa Fe Opera
- 2000 World premiere and tour of cello concerto Six Realms with Yo-Yo Ma
- 2007 Received Grawemeyer Award for Neruda Songs
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Critical Acclaim:
Like all of Lieberson's music, it is acutely, actively heard and written along every line, without padding. The composer handles his orchestra with imagination and with new, fertile invention; the string writing and the episodes for small, unusual ensembles are especially striking.
— The New Yorker
Lieberson convincingly builds grand statements, then, effortlessly, relaxes and understates the climax.
— Financial Times
The Neruda Songs — a setting of five love poems on deep and wrenching subjects such as passing delight, memory, fear of separation and transcendence beyond death — is one of the most extraordinary affecting artistic gifts ever created by one lover to another... The score is achingly lovely, a genuine mixture of modernism and romanticism that has been sumptuously orchestrated and charged with the same appreciative ripeness that pervades Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs... — Washington Post
Full Biography:
In December 2007, Peter Lieberson won the University of Louisville's 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for Neruda Songs, his song-cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra on poetry of Nobel Prize-winning Pablo Neruda.Lieberson's works first came to national attention in 1983, with the premiere of his Piano Concerto, composed for Peter Serkin and commissioned by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for their centennial. Andrew Porter wrote in The New Yorker that it was a "major addition to the modern concerto repertory." It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the subsequent recording of the work won Opus Magazine‘s Contemporary Music Award for 1985. Following its success, Lieberson was again commissioned by Ozawa and the BSO, which resulted in Drala (1986), "a short symphony but a profound one and, in many of its pages, a profoundly beautiful one," according to the Boston Globe. Drala has been performed recently by the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New World Symphony, and the London Sinfonietta. Lieberson's Neruda Songs, a setting of five sonnets by Pablo Neruda for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony for Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. The world premiere took place in Los Angeles in May, followed by a "Composers' Choice" concert with the Los Angeles New Music Group conducted by Lieberson, which featured his Horn Concerto, Free and Easy Wanderer, the Piano Quintet and Rilke Songs. Neruda Songs have also been performed recently by soloist Kelley O'Connor with the Chicago Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Louisville Orchestra and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. Other recent performances include Red Garuda at the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with soloist Peter Serkin; and a Composer Portrait concert of Lieberson's works from a twenty-five year period at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. Recent concert works include his Piano Concerto No. 3 for pianist Peter Serkin and the Minnesota Orchestra; Piano Quintet for Peter Serkin and the Orion Quartet; Ah for the Cleveland Orchestra; Six Realms, a cello concerto for Yo-Yo Ma and the Toronto Symphony; Red Garuda, for Peter Serkin and the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the Horn Concerto, premiered by William Purvis and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; Free and Easy Wanderer, premiered by the London Sinfonietta at the 1998 Aldeburgh Festival; and Fire, a 150th-anniversary commission from the New York Philharmonic, who also commissioned and premiered The World in Flower in May 2009. New works in 2009-2010 include Remembering Schumann for Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Emanuel Ax (piano); The Coming of Light for baritone, oboe, and string quartet; and Songs of Love and Sorrow for Gerald Finley and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine conducting. Dramatic works have figured prominently in Lieberson's recent creative output. Ashoka's Dream is the second in a series of operatic works, beginning with King Gesar, on the topic of enlightened rulership and the creation of enlightened society. Set to a libretto by Douglas Penick and commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera, Ashoka's Dream received its first performance in July 1997. Mark Swed, of the Los Angeles Times, wrote that Ashoka's Dream is "both splashy and stirring in its revealing of the majesty of its storytelling. The colors of the orchestra dazzle with the sonorities of great bell-like, all-encompassing chords, with rich lyrical passages and with martial orchestral conflagrations....It is music in which one feels the force of progress and senses not only its power but also the scariness of change....Ashoka's music is the most beautiful of all, and it is an inspiration to watch the complexities fall away from it as his wisdom grows." King Gesar, a work for Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, narrator and chamber ensemble, which premiered at the 1992 Munich Biennale Festival, was recorded for Sony Classical with a documentary filmed on its creation. Lieberson recently created an orchestral work, Suite from Ashoka's Dream, commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival and the Toronto Symphony, which premiered in summer 2009. Lieberson's collaborations with Peter Serkin have resulted in three piano concertos and in the piano pieces Garland, Fantasy Pieces, Bagatelles, Scherzo, and The Ocean that has no West and no East, which premiered in Tokyo in the fall of 1997. Serkin recorded several of Lieberson's piano works for his solo album "...in real time" which was released by BMG Classics in 1996. His Piano Fantasy and The Ocean that has no West and no East were also recorded by Serkin for BMG and released in 2000. Other notable works include Variations for Violin and Piano, premiered at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in 1995; Variations for Piano, for Emanuel Ax, first performed at Lincoln Center in 1996; and the chamber works String Quartet, Ziji, and Raising the Gaze. A 2002 Deutsche Grammophon release includes Drala, Ziji, and Fire performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Oliver Knussen, conducting; Raising the Gaze, Accordance, and Three Songs performed by the ASKO Ensemble; and Free and Easy Wanderer performed by the London Sinfonietta. In 2006 Bridge Records released a new recording of Lieberson's Six Realms, the Horn Concerto, and Rilke Songs; and in December of that year, Nonesuch Records released Neruda Songs, sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (with the Boston Symphony Orchestra) in one of her final performances. The recordings of the Rilke Songs and Neruda Songs both won Grammy awards for Best Vocal Performance. In 2010 Bridge Records releases a new disc including Red Garuda, Piano Quintet, and Rilke Songs, recorded by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Peter Serkin. Peter Lieberson was born in New York City in 1946 and now lives in Santa Fe. He is the son of the late Goddard Lieberson, former president of Columbia Records, and the ballerina Vera Zorina. Lieberson's principal teachers in composition were Milton Babbitt, Charles Wuorinen, Donald Martino, and Martin Boykan. After completing musical studies at Columbia University, he left New York City in 1976 for Boulder, Colorado to continue his studies with Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist master he met in 1974. Lieberson then moved to Boston to direct Shambhala Training, a meditation and cultural program. During this period he also attended Brandeis University and received his Ph.D. From 1984 to 1988 he taught at Harvard University, then became international director of Shambhala Training in Halifax. Since 1994 he has devoted his time exclusively to composition. Among Lieberson's many awards are those from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and a Brandeis Creative Arts Award. In 2006, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music is published exclusively by Associated Music Publishers. —January 2010
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