Premiere of Husa’s Cello Concerto Tonight

Larry Livingston exudes obvious excitement when he talks about the concert tonight by the USC Symphony at Ambassador Auditorium because the event will feature the world premiere of a cello concerto by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Karel Husa, with Lynn Harrell as the soloist.

The new work was made possible by a gift from Florence Kerze and Therese Kerze Cheyovich, who have established a fund in memory of their brother, Frank Kerze Jr.

Notes Livingston, dean of the USC School of Music: “It is a great blessing for us that Florence and Therese have seen fit to provide us with an opportunity to commission a world-class composer to write a work for a great cellist and a great conductor and a great orchestra.”

Frank Kerze Jr., who died in 1985, was a prominent chemical scientist and a pioneer in nuclear power, as well as an amateur cellist. His sisters say they want to leave something that reflects his passion for music, and feel that making a gift to an educational institution is most appropriate.

Having great admiration for Daniel Lewis, the conductor of the USC Symphony, Therese Kerze Cheyovich (the West Coast member of the family) decided to approach him on how the gift could be used. Taking into account her brother’s interest in new music and his passion for the cello, it seemed best that the money should go toward the commissioning of a work for cello and orchestra. Furthermore, Harrell, who holds the Piatigorsky Chair in Violoncello at USC, seemed the right recipient.

After considering a number of composers, all parties settled enthusiastically on Husa, a prolific composer who has fulfilled more than 40 commissions. Moreover, Cheyovich felt some cultural affinity for the Czech-born composer, since the Kerze family is of Slavic origin.

The initial gift of $120,000--which has made it possible to commission the work, copy and reproduce parts, and advertise and produce the concert--was recently followed by another gift of $70,000. How the second gift will be used has yet to be determined.

“I can’t say enough in praise of USC, Daniel Lewis and of course Larry (Livingston),” Cheyovich says.

Husa, who has taught at Cornell since 1954, spent over a year on the 35-minute work. Writing with Harrell in mind, he sought, he says, to create “a virtuosic exploration of the cello, and an exploration of the instrument’s highest register.” Referring to Harrell, the composer says he was “always impressed by his powerful playing as well as his gentleness.”

Harrell feels that the concerto is well suited to his style of playing. “He (Husa) has captured a number of aspects of my playing. It seems so fabulously conceived for me.” Even before rehearsals for the premiere began, Harrell scheduled another performance, next year in Zurich.

A few hours after his first rehearsal with the orchestra, the cellist declared that he was “very excited” about performing the work.

“I really felt, in playing this piece today, that this is a great cello concerto . . . This piece shows aspects of (Husa’s) sensibility and tenderness as a person, but also his sense of outrage at injustice.”

Indeed, the musical language of the 67-year-old composer is one colored both by the Czech tradition of Dvorak and Janacek and by the moral indignation that an oppressed people have for so long felt. Husa’s most frequently performed work, “Music for Prague 1968,” vividly portrays the events of that tragic summer in his native city.

His music has been praised for its rhythmic inventiveness, orchestrational brilliance and originality, traits that Lewis finds in the cello concerto. He cites a passage in the first movement where the strings play in quarter tones, a passage that sounds “very, very eerie.”