Themes and Conclusions

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

228-229

text excerpt

Twenty years later he commissioned a work from me as a memorial to his wife, Natalie, but his performance of this Ode, as I called it, was another disaster. The trumpet player misread the key of the instrument required in the third movement, failed to transpose, and played the part a major-second flat. Worse still, two systems of score from the final page were copied as one, and played that way, so that my simple triadic piece concluded in a cacophony that a few years later would have won me some prestige with the avantgarde. This sudden change in style not only failed to excite Kussevitsky’s suspicions, however, but he actually confined to me that he preferred ‘the original version’’.

excerpt from 'Themes and Conclusions' pp. 228-229 (125 words)

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