Some revolutions are noisy affairs from the start.
But other revolutions start quietly and get noisier only with time. Twenty years after the event, the first performances of George Rochberg s Concord Quartets appear to have been the beginnings of that second kind of revolution. At their New York premiere, Leonard Bernstein embraced the composer in his legendary bear hug and called the quartets masterpieces. But other critics weren t so sure. Most are now.