A Bold, Brash 'Cello Symphony

By Michael Walsh

When the cello section of the San Francisco Symphony finished a particularly tricky passage in Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's new Symphony No. 2 during rehearsal last week, the rest of the orchestra burst into applause. What provoked the collegial accolade was a daring cadenza for ten instruments playing as one, a high-wire act that is one of the emotional peaks of Zwilich's aptly subtitled 'Cello Symphony. The musicians' reaction was not surprising: Zwilich, 46, who in 1983 became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, has for some time been regarded by fellow professionals as an important contemporary composer. Now audiences are catching on too.

Until recently, few outside the music business had heard of the Miami-born composer, for Taaffe Zwilich (rhymes with safe hillock) was a woman in a field that has historically been dominated by men. But after she won the Pulitzer for her Symphony No. 1 (also known as Three Movements for Orchestra), her pieces suddenly began popping up on programs everywhere. Today Zwilich is that rarity, a composer who makes her living entirely from commissions, performance fees and royalties, without having to rely on teaching or grants to ensure a modest but adequate income.

"I don't think of it as a compromise to write music that means something to the player and listener," says Zwilich, who lives in New York City. Indeed, although she studied at the Juilliard School with Elliott Carter and the late Roger Sessions, both masters of almost gnomic complexity, Zwilich writes in a disarmingly open style. On the page her music looks as clear as Brahms'; to the ear it sounds as bold and vigorous as Shostakovich's or Prokofiev's. But it always remains her own. Says she: "The more I am true to myself, the more accessible I seem to be."

Although women composers are still a distinct minority, Zwilich feels that times are slowly changing. As evidence, she cites such composers as Joan Tower and Elizabeth Larson and says, "In the arts, once the door is open, the door stays open." An unabashed feminist, Zwilich supports the concept of all-women concerts. "I'd love to see the necessity for them simply vanish," she says. "But the reality is they are still needed."

Her own music needs no special pleading. In a work like the Double Quartet for Strings (1984), heard as part of the San Francisco Symphony's week-long salute to the composer, Zwilich displays a formidable technical command coupled with a striking ear for beguiling string sonorities. Her 1979 Chamber Symphony, a kind of elegy to her late husband, Metropolitan Opera Violinist Joseph Zwilich, is reminiscent of Shostakovich in its arching melodies and air of melancholic brooding.

Zwilich's new symphony is a 24-minute, three-movement, fast-slow-fast essay that daringly transforms the cello section into a collective soloist, a throaty protagonist locked in combat with the rest of the orchestra. Hard driving and explosive, the piece erupts from a single rhythmic idea that propels the music forward relentlessly. Even the moody slow movement cannot dilute the restless surge, which continues undaunted right to the final bar. Under Conductor Edo de Waart, the San Francisco players gave the 'Cello Symphony a committed, accomplished performance.

The Pulitzer has not altered Zwilich's practical approach to her art. Writing with performing opportunities in mind, she says, "is a healthy atmosphere for an artist. When young people come to me for advice, I tell them to compose things for their musician friends to play. Don't sit at home and write for the Chicago Symphony." Until, that is, the Chicago Symphony asks you. --By Michael Walsh