A couple of years in the past, throughout the Ojai Music Festival in California, the pianist Vikingur Olafsson was having a few beers with the composer John Adams when he stated, “John, you recognize that you’re going to write me a piano concerto, don’t you?”
Adams paused for a number of seconds, took a sip and responded, “I suppose you’re proper.”
“And that,” Olafsson stated in an interview, “was that.” With an off-the-cuff remark, one among immediately’s most intelligently expressive pianists brokered a take care of one of many world’s great composers. The ensuing half-hour concerto, “After the Fall,” premieres on Thursday on the San Francisco Symphony.
San Francisco, close to Adams’s dwelling in Berkeley, is simply the primary cease on the piece’s tour: It has 9 commissioners, from cities together with Paris, London, Los Angeles and Vienna. Olafsson has additionally programmed “After the Fall” elsewhere, guaranteeing it broad publicity within the close to future.
“It’s so significant to me as a composer,” Adams stated, “that there are particular artists on the very high stage like Vikingur who take a piece, and so they’re really dedicated to it. If we’re going to have a future for our artwork, we want individuals to have that type of passionate devotion to the work.”
Olafsson stated he wasn’t motivated by a way of obligation to program “After the Fall.” He simply loves Adams’s music, and needs to internalize it, the way in which he would a concerto by Mozart or Ravel.
“I need to have the feeling that you simply turn out to be the music while you play it, just a little bit like an actor who turns into the position that they act,” he stated. “But that simply takes a variety of time.”
It helps that Olafsson is an inveterate performer of Adams’s earlier piano concertos, “Century Rolls” (1996), which was written for Emanuel Ax, and “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” (2018), written for Yuja Wang. Like these, “After the Fall” has a poetic but evocative title. Adams, in a joint interview with Olafsson, mentioned what impressed that identify, and extra particulars of the rating. Here are edited excerpts from the dialog.
What introduced you two collectively?
JOHN ADAMS We met in Paris proper earlier than the pandemic shut every little thing down. “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” had been finished, however I by no means really feel that I’m actually assured about my items till I’ve carried out them. I had heard about this improbable Icelandic pianist, Vikingur Olafsson, and we didn’t actually know one another. But we did it in Paris, and we’ve since finished it throughout. That was the beginning of not solely our collaboration, however a very fantastic friendship.
VIKINGUR OLAFSSON I’ve been listening to your music since I used to be like 13. My father is a composer and an architect, and has all this time throughout his workdays as he’s designing homes to take heed to the most effective of recent music. And so he mainly introduced me John’s music the identical time I used to be discovering Stravinsky.
How does “After the Fall” differ in character from Adams’s different piano concertos?
OLAFSSON They share a typical brilliance. “Century Rolls” I discover to be a really joyful piece. I keep in mind once I performed that, I made a connection to Maurice Ravel, however I didn’t take into consideration Ravel in “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” That is clearly a masterpiece, however a really darkish piece, far more tense.
I did consider Ravel once I was wanting on the rating of this new concerto, in its sense of structure and craftsmanship, and the enjoyment within the element. But there’s additionally this component within the third motion, which revolves across the go to of a sure Johann Sebastian.
It ends with a fantasia of types based mostly on the C-minor Prelude from the primary guide of Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”
OLAFSSON It’s so convincing and totally different from something I’ve ever performed and something I’ve ever heard. It feels just a little bit like coming into your private home, however you’ve by no means been there earlier than. The complete factor’s a wierd paradox: You’re coming into a spot that feels very very like you acknowledge your self in it, and it’s yours in a sure sense, however you’ve by no means been there earlier than.
What is the story behind the title?
ADAMS There are a few quotes from Boulez’s “Music Lessons,” an enormous tome of lectures he gave on the Collège de France. And he has a type of dystopian description of the current, that in essence the avant-garde is exhausted. There aren’t any extra concepts, simply going again and mining the previous as a result of there’s nothing contemporary. I learn that as a considerably Miltonian scene, like the autumn within the Garden of Eden.
At the identical time, there’s a pun within the title as a result of Sam, my son, had written a piano concerto, which was additionally premiered by San Francisco. It’s known as “No Such Spring,” so there may be just a bit little bit of an in-joke there.
≠But we’re working in a type of post-avant-garde period, which I’ve been working in all my life, and we cease and ask ourselves concerning the relevance of what we’re doing, particularly in a tradition the place pop music is so suffocatingly omnipresent and all-powerful. Are we residing in a interval after the autumn, or is that this actually a interval during which one thing very significant may be finished with concepts that have been first found two, three, 4 hundred years in the past?
A composer like Busoni would say that the previous should at all times inform the current.
ADAMS There was a David Hockney exhibition on the De Young Museum in San Francisco. One room affected me so strongly, and it wasn’t his portray. The room was lined from ground to ceiling with photos which have meant one thing to him. It was every little thing: photos of sculpture, images, journey magazines, work. And I spotted that’s type of the place I’ve been all my life. I’ve discovered these indicators which are significant, and lots of of them are acquainted to listeners, however I’ve made a brand new language out of them.
How would you describe the form of “After the Fall”?
OLAFSSON The rating is very refined, and on the similar time energetic. It additionally feels so quick. It looks like a 15-minute concerto, I feel due to the gradual motion, which is probably my favourite. While it’s gradual, it is usually extraordinarily gentle. It has a variety of notes, really, nevertheless it’s type of balletic. Another cause, I feel is the inside structure of the piece, the counterpoint and the usage of motives for structural constructing. In that sense, since you hold listening to acquainted motives in new settings and harmonic contexts, it flies by.
The finish of the piece has an abrupt climax, then a lingering, quietly ringing harp. What do you make of that?
ADAMS I hold a journal about my work, and it’s humorous if I’m going again and browse it as a result of I at all times have a second of exasperation making an attempt to finish a bit. I’ve items like “Harmonielehre,” the place I end in a blazing major triad and the viewers goes berserk. But that type of ending, except it’s ironic, doesn’t match our zeitgeist. I can’t clarify this ending. I most likely want remedy to elucidate what occurs.
OLAFSSON I feel the one solution to finish a very good dialog is with a query.
ADAMS That’s good. Thank you for explaining that.
OLAFSSON My first thought was that he’s simply despatched Bach into outer house. That was my first, humorous thought. But on a extra severe observe, it simply poses the query that John described earlier. Where are we in creating new music and rethinking materials from the previous? My reply is that you simply definitely can write a wild new fantasy whereas observing Bach and Ravel and every little thing in between, however everybody has to reply that for themselves. It’s an enormous query, however it’s the query.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com