NEW YORK, NY (For Release 04.15.24) — The Virgil Thomson Foundation today announced the release of its final album from the Everbest Music label by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer/author Virgil Thomson —Virgil Thomson: A Gallery of Portraits for Piano and Other Piano Works brought to life by his friend and colleague, the distinguished pianist Craig Rutenberg. Representing the largest collection of piano portraits ever recorded by one artist, the two-disc set completes Thomson’s robust catalog of over 150 portraits. The additional 40 portrait songs can be heard on the 1990 critically-acclaimed album Portraits and Self-Portraits (Northeastern Records, reissued as Portraits, Self-Portraits and Songs by Everbest Music in 2020). In their range and variety, they are certainly Thomson’s most personal, and as a group, his most lovable works.    

“This broad selection of Virgil Thomson’s portraits for piano, with a few extra smaller arrangements (made by Mr. Thomson) is presented by the Virgil Thomson Foundation as one of its major efforts to preserve Thomson’s large and diverse legacy. Craig Rutenberg’s performances could not be more authentic. Craig was one of Thomson’s oldest friends—for many decades—and an experienced performer of his keyboard works. Thomson himself referred to a few earlier examples of musical portraiture, but his over 150 portraits, not only for piano but also for chamber ensembles and orchestra, do seem to set some sort of record for this musical enterprise.”  - Charles Fussell, President, Virgil Thomson Foundation

From 1928 until his death in 1989 Thomson engaged in the practice of composing abstract musical portraits of friends, colleagues, and cultural dignitaries. Following the standard practice of his many painter friends, Thomson composed his portraits in the presence of the subject–his sitters, as he called them usually–a session lasting no more than 90 minutes, to assure spontaneity. The “model” would sit for their portrait, and the score page would become a canvas. Thomson’s portraits divide chronologically into three groups: 81 portraits from 1928-1945 of his friends and associates in Paris and New York; four portraits from 1951-1972; and seven portraits from 1966-1975. Theto longtime friends such as his secretary, Karen Brown Waltuck, as well as the album’s performer himself, Craig Rutenberg.  
 
“Virgil Thomson refused to write my portrait for 10 years. He kept telling me that he would someday but that I had much protective emotional armor around me to get anywhere. I guess I dropped that armor someplace along the line and I am so glad that I did.”  - Craig Rutenberg, pianist
 
On this recording, 69 portraits are joined by the suite from the celebrated music for the film The Plow That Broke the Plains, selections from the score of the ballet Filling Station, and the Two Sentimental Tangos, the more traditional “premeditated” quality of which offers contrast to the more spontaneous procedures and continuity of the portraits.
 
About Craig Rutenberg
Pianist and Vocal Coach Craig Rutenberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut. After studies in German, Italian and Linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, he attended the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana for studies in accompanying with John Westman and opera preparation with David Lloyd. Further studies took place in Paris with Pierre Bernac and Miriam Solovieff and in London with Martin Isepp and Geoffrey Parsons. Head of Music at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City (1990–1992 and 2006–2015), Craig Rutenberg has also worked at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, IRCAM, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the Houston Grand Opera. He has also given classes at the training programs at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne (Jerwood Artists), the Paris Opera at the Bastille, the Chicago Lyric Opera, the Santa Fe Opera and the Royal Operas of Stockholm and Gothenburg.
 
Craig Rutenberg has also taught on the faculties of Yale University, the Eastman School of Music, Boston University and the Manhattan School of Music. In recent seasons, he’s coached and given classes at the Atkins Program at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the University of Kansas in Lawrence and the Palm Beach Opera. Craig Rutenberg has appeared in recital, recorded and performed on television and radio with Diana Damrau, Christine Brewer, Dawn Upshaw, Harolyn Blackwell, Susanne Mentzer, Frederica von Stade, Dolora Zajick, Jerry Hadley, Ben Heppner, Thomas Hampson, Simon Keenlyside, René Pape, Willard White and Maria Guleghina. In addition to this recording, Craig Rutenberg’s association with Thomson includes translations, done in tandem with the composer, of the Gertrude Stein text of Four Saints in Three Acts.
 
About Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson (1896–1989) was a many-faceted composer of great originality and a music critic of singular brilliance. He was one of the most important composers of the 20th century aka “the Father of American Music” as hailed by Aaron Copland. After studying at Harvard, he moved to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, and remained in France for most of the next 15 years, meeting Cocteau, Stravinsky, Satie and the artists of Les Six. When he finally returned to the US in 1940, he became chief music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. Thomson composed in almost every genre, utilizing a style marked by sharp wit and overt playfulness, and produced a highly original body of work rooted in American speech rhythms and hymnbook harmony. Among his most famous works are the operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All (both with texts by Gertrude Stein), scores to The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River(films by Pare Lorentz), and Louisiana Story (film by Robert Flaherty). In addition to his compositions, he was the author of eight books, including an autobiography. Included in his many honors and awards are the Pulitzer Prize, a Brandeis Award, the Gold Medal for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Book Circle Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors. The 25^th anniversary of his death was commemorated during 2014. VirgilThomson.org