Two New Exhibits Feature Artistic Contributions by East Europeans

By Bogdan Horbal, Curator, Slavic and East European Collections
March 7, 2019

In a clever programming move, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (LPA) organized an event late last year entitled Paderewski in New York: 1891 Madison Square Garden Debut Revival Concert. It brought two pianists to LPA's Bruno Walter Auditorium: Jakub Kuszlik and Timothy Jones, from Poland and the U.S. respectively, who reconstructed Ignacy Paderewski’s first solo recital in the city. This event can be seen as an apt complement to a duo of current exhibits highlighting the contributions of other East Europeans to the American music and dance scene.

Cover of Tape Recorder Music, composed and recorded by Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening

from NYPL Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound

One of the two LPA exhibitions, Sounding Circuits: Audible Histories, traces the teams of composers and engineers—as well as the groundbreaking facilities and revolutionary technologies—that played a crucial role in the expansion of electronic music from the 1950s to the present. A contributor featured prominently in the exhibition is  Vladimir Alexeevich Ussachevsky (1911-1990), born in the Hailar District of China to an Imperial Russian Army officer who was posted there to safeguard Trans-Siberian Railway interests.
Ussachevsky, who eventually became a pioneering electronic composer with more than 44 works to his credit, arrived in the United States in 1930 and received his higher education here, earning his Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY in 1939. Ussachevsky taught at Columbia University (1940-1980) and, in 1959,  co-founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City with Otto Luening (1900-1996).  The center served as a hub for electronic music research and the work there of Ussachevsky and his colleague Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) paved the way for the creation of the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer (1957), a complex and outsized innovation. 
In the mid-1960s, the so-called ADSR envelope, created to modulate characteristics of electronic instruments and developed to Ussachevsky's specifications, became the basic element in all synthesizers and programmable keyboard instruments, so important to bands like Tangerine Dream (est. 1967) and Emerson, Lake & Palmer (est. 1970).

Program cover for Two Concerts of Contemporary American Music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, in the auditorium of the Museum of Modern Art

from NYPL Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound

Another East European musician is also highlighted in the exhibit: Leopold Stokowski (1882-1987), an English conductor who was quick to point out his Polish background on his father's side. (His mother was of Irish descent.) Stokowski's interest in innovation manifested as early as 1925 when he conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra for the first electrical recording of a symphony orchestra performance, in this instance, the Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. 
In 1931, Stokowski started collaborating with Bell Laboratories, which were engaged in research and development of radio and audio technologies. The Bell Labs work was later studied by Ussachevsky and his partner Luening for their "tape and electronic music project."
As a lifelong champion of contemporary composers,  Stokowski invited Ussachevsky and Luening to give what is considered "the first public concert of tape recorder music in the United States." In 1952, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, they performed their work Fantasy in Space, which comprised flute recordings manipulated on magnetic tape.

Curated by Seth Cluett, current artist-in-residence at Nokia Bell Labs and Acting Director of the Computer Music Center at Columbia University, Sounding Circuits is presented in collaboration with the Department of Music at Columbia University and Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology. Special kudos are due to the staff of The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, led by Jonathan Hiam. 

A larger exhibit, Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York, pays tribute to the iconic American choreographer, director, dancer, and theater producer. Robbins (1918-1998), whose artistic achievements need no introduction, was born in New York City to Jewish parents Harry Rabinowitz and Lena Rips. Harry immigrated from the village of  Rozhanka/Różanka, Russian Empire (now Razhanka in Belarus), while Lena's family was from Minsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus). When Jerome was six, his mother took him and his sister to Różanka (in Poland at that time) to see his grandfather. As was the case with countless Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, the town was decimated during World War II.
A video recording of Robbins dancing with his parents on the roof of their home in Weehawken, New Jersey is very touching and deserving of its placement at the entrance to the exhibition.  It also serves as a haunting link to a world that no longer exists. 

Petrushka, a watercolor by Robbins, c. 1930; courtesy Jerome Robbins Trust, Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

Other East European motifs appear in artifacts including diaries, drawings, watercolors, paintings, story scenarios, poems, and, of course, dance. Robbins was captivated by the role of the puppet Petrushka in the ballet burlesque of the same title, composed in 1910-1911 (revised in 1947) by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). It tells of three puppets brought to life by a Charlatan during the 1830 Maslianitsa (Shrovetide Fair) and was first performed in Paris by Serge Diaghilev's  Ballets Russes.
During the premiere, the main character was performed by another giant of dance, Vaslav Nijinski (aka Wacław Niżyński, 1889/1890-1950), born in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to Polish parents. Nijinski's work remained a permanent source of intrigue and interest for Robbins, who danced the role of Petrushka himself in 1942 in a ballet by Michel Fokine. It was a high point of his career as a dancer. 

Special thanks are extended to the staff of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, led by Linda Murray, for this engaging exhibit.