The Stronger

The CBS radio workshop dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind. Tonight, a pre-release performance of Hugo Viscals the Stronger, a recorded one act, one voice opera chosen by the American Chamber of Music Committee to be given a major performance on record as part of the Columbia Modern American Composer Series.

Serving on the American Chamber of Music Committee are Virgil Thompson, composer and critic as Chairman, Aaron Copeland, composer and chairman of the Faculty of the Berkshire Music Center, and Raecal, composer and professor of composition, Peabody Institute of Music, Baltimore, Maryland, William Schumann, President of Juilliard School of Music, and Goddard Lieberson, President of Columbia Records.

Here is Mr. Lieberson. When the Committee for the Modern American Music Series, which included the speaker, I first heard a test record that was submitted of a chamber opera by a composer named Hugo Vysgol. We were all struck by what seemed to us to be the emergence of a genuine American opera composer, a composer who seemed to have grasped not only the elements of his work as

a musician but also those important elements that make up that rare being a genuine theatrical composer. The stronger small opera based on a play by Strinberg is perhaps not immediately accessible in its full values, but what is immediately accessible is the dramatic impact.

I think that perhaps as far as the music is concerned, the best thing I can do is quote from the notes that Mr. George Rochberg has supplied for this record. He says, in general, It is difficult to place Viscal's musical style, not that it is important or necessary to do so.

We are too fond of labeling composers today. Still his music leans heavily in the direction of a freely handled chromatic palate, without ever sounding like so-called atonal music. The diversity of harmonic palate is evident in the stronger, as is the composer's sensitivity to orchestral color.