Cincinnati

In April 1977, the LaSalle Quartet invited Witold Lutosławski to Cincinnati. Thirteen years earlier, it had been the first ensemble to perform his String Quartet, playing it over subsequent years a further ninety-seven times. The quartet was attached to the music department of the local university, and so it invited Lutosławski to take some lessons with students. They included Steven Stucky, who soon became one of the most fervent propagators of Lutosławski’s music and author of the first English-language monograph devoted to the composer and his music.