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Henri Lazarof (b1932)

Henri Lazarof is a true polymath with significant parallels to such eminent predecessors as Leonard Bernstein and Camille Saint-Sans, both of whose breadth of knowledge in disparate fields embraced and exceeded their primary vocation as composers. Bernsteins talents as a teacher are well known because of his televised broadcasts to children. Saint-Sans lectured on astronomy. Henri Lazarof, in addition to being a frequently performed composer with commissions from the Seattle Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic and London Sinfonietta, has taught composition as well as French language and literature. Lazarof was born in Sofia, Bulgaria on 12th April, 1932, and began his musical studies at the age of six. He graduated from the Sofia Academy in 1948 and studied at the New Jerusalem Academy of Music from 1949 to 1952 and with Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome from 1955 to 1957. In 1957 he moved to the United States and studied at Brandeis University on a full scholarship with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1959. While a student at Brandeis, his considerable skill in composition was put to immediate use, bringing him early recognition. In 1958, his String Quartet won first prize from Bostons Brookline Public Library, and his Cantata received a commission from Brandeis University for its 1959 Arts Festival.

In 1959 Lazarof moved to California, where he still lives, and took a position as teacher of French language and literature at

UCLA. Three years later he joined the Universitys Music Department and eventually rose to the rank of Emeritus Professor. In 1963 he organized the Festival of Contemporary Music, which featured music and lectures by Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Leonard Stein. His international reputation received a boost in 1966 when he was awarded the first International Prize of Milan for Structures Sonores. In 1970-71, he completed seven major works while serving as artist in residence for the West German government in West Berlin. With the completion of his residency in Berlin, Lazarof returned in 1973 to UCLA, where he was named Artistic Director of its Contemporary Music Festival that year. Since that time works flowed from this diligent, hardworking composer who is always honing his considerable craft.

For many years Lazarof had been quite taken with the artwork of the great Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, the seminal figure in the evolution of abstract art. After an initially negative reaction to the non-representational quality of French impressionist painters at an exhibition in 1895, Kandinsky came far to exceed Monet and his colleagues in transcending the boundaries of realism. The child of musical parents, Kandinsky learned the piano and cello while young and had a profound feel for music. He once said that colour is the keyboard, the eyes the harmonies, the soul the piano with many strings. Like Scriabin, he posited a strong connection between colour and musical harmony, associating tone with timbre, hue with pitch, and so forth. He claimed to see colour when he heard music. Kandinskys beautifully crafted abstract paintings manifest a rhythmic vibrancy that reflects his sense of a musical-visual nexus. Perhaps it is that musical quality of his art that reinforced Lazarofs connection to Kandinskys works. A spur to the composers decision to translate his resonance to the artist came from pianist Alexis Weissenberg, who encouraged Lazarof to compose a large orchestral work, a kind of fresco. With the support of Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, which commissioned Tableaux, Lazarof travelled to Paris, Munich and New York City, where he viewed hundreds of Kandinskys painting. The resultant orchestral score is a bold, multi-hued tapestry of stunning instrumental colours, with textures ranging from the spare and intimate to the richly layered and voluminous.

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Discography