Kirchner: Duo for Violin and Piano / Piano Trio / Piano Sonata / Triptych

Kirchner was born in Brooklyn in 1919, the son of Russian Jews. At the age of nine his family moved to Los Angeles, which was in the 1930s to become a creative mecca with the influx of distinguished figures fleeing Nazi Europe. Family hopes for a medical career were dashed when Kirchner put his zoology major behind him and entered Arnold Schoenberg's class at U.C.L.A. (University of California at Los Angeles). He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the University of California at Berkeley, where he had classes with Ernest Bloch. Awarded the Prix de Paris in 1942, he intended to go abroad, but because of the war settled in New York and studied with Roger Sessions. After army service he returned to Berkeley for graduate studies. He held professorships at the University of Southern California, Mills College, and, from 1961 until his retirement in 1989, at Harvard University.