New York Philharmonic / Alan Gilbert
New York Stories: John Adams
Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic are a world-class combination. »The orchestra is playing better under Gilbert than ever before« – thus the enthusiastic review in »New Yorker« magazine. On their European tour together – the last one with Alan Gilbert as chief conductor – they present works by the American composer John Adams, who recently celebrated his 70th birthday.
On the one hand, the programme features Adams’s highly-regarded symphony »Harmonielehre« (1985), whose title refers to the music theory textbook of the same name by Arnold Schoenberg. In the work, Adams interweaves Schoenbergian harmonic sequences and Wagnerian Late Romanticism with soundscapes à la Sibelius and post-minimalistic rhythms. He was inspired to create this wild mixture by two surreal dreams he had: in one, an oil tanker in San Francisco Bay shot straight up out of the water like a rocket, and in the other his daughter flew through space on the shoulders of the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart.
The other piece on this evening’s programme is Adams’s 25-minute »Absolute Jest« (2010), which the composer himself refers to as a »mega-scherzo«. This work has an extremely innovative scoring, with the symphonic sound of a full orchestra being contrasted with the slender structures of a string quartet. As far as the musical material is concerned, Adams works many different quotes from the oeuvre of Beethoven into »Absolute Jest«.
The composer will give an introductory talk at the beginning of the concert.
Performers
New York Philharmonic
Frank Huang violin
Sheryl Staples violin
Cynthia Phelps viola
Carter Brey violoncello
conductor Alan Gilbert
John Adams talk
Programme
John Adams
Absolute Jest für Streichquartett und Orchester
– Interval –
John Adams
Harmonielehre
Mit einem Einführungsgespräch des Komponisten zu Beginn des Konzerts