#ntrzaterdagmatinee — Public Fediverse posts

Sam Adams’ take on Concerto grosso premieres in Concertgebouw: Movements (for us and them)

For the season 2020-2021 Samuel Adams was booked as composer in residence of The Concertgebouw. Both his residency in Amsterdam and the new orchestral work he was to compose for NTRZaterdagMatinee fell prey to Covid-19 however. On Saturday 22 May the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra will instead perform the Dutch premiere of Movements (for us and them), under the baton of chief conductor Karina Canellakis.

Sam Adams (San Francisco, 1985) is determinedly shaping his career as a composer. – Preferably under his own steam: his biography does not even mention he is the son of the world-famous John Adams. In 2019 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.

He had been looking forward to exploring our capital city by bike in order to find inspiration for his new orchestral work, he said in 2020. Though this fell through, he did complete his new composition, Variations, for the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.

However, the line-up proved too large for a corona proof performance, therefore it was replaced by Movements (for us and them) for string orchestra. Adams composed this in 2018 for the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Critics praised its ‘trance-like energy and radiance’, ‘subtle emotional power,’ and feverish rhythms’.

As the son of a composer and a photographer, Samuel Adams seemed predestined for a career in the cultural world. He started out as a double bass player in jazz ensembles – just as his father had once played the clarinet in jazz orchestras – and only later started composing.

But where John had been more or less caught between serialism and minimalism, Sam ‘didn’t have to choose sides’, as he remarked in an interview: ‘I can use anything I like in my music.’ His work is often lyrical and makes regular use of electronics; besides composition, he studied electroacoustics.

ITALO CALVINO

Movements (for us and them) was inspired by Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio (Six Memos for the New Millennium) by Italo Calvino (1923-1985). The celebrated Italian author wrote these for a series of lectures at Harvard, defining the different criteria he believed literature should meet. Calvino died when he had only worked out five themes: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.

Adams built his composition mainly around the first three characteristics. There is a regular emphasis on high registers (lightness); the driving triplets give the piece an enormous velocity (quickness); the carefully dosed syncopations and irregular rhythms testify of his love for structure (exactitude).

COLLABORATION INSTEAD OF COMPETITION

This is also evident in his second source of inspiration: the concerto grosso, which was popular in the Baroque era. The string orchestra is divided into two groups: a string quartet – similar to the concertino – and a thirteen-piece string ensemble that also includes a double bass.

But Adams gives his own twist to the genre: instead of placing the two groups opposite each other like rivals, he subverts the traditional hierarchy by having them work together, hence the subtitle ‘for us and them’.

In what he himself describes as ‘role fluidity’, both groups – and within them the individual musicians – are constantly changing roles. Sometimes they team up or even merge, but continuously new soloists detach themselves from both ensembles, now playing a sweet love song or wistful lament, then a jolly tune or a Scottish-style dance. The other strings produce a heartbeat of muffled pizzicati, knot a luscious carpet of sustained sounds, or play counter-melodies.

COLLECTIVE SIGH

The furious tempo is abruptly halted several times on an eighth note in triple sforzando, after which the dense fabric breaks open and a moment of relaxation sets in. Adams repeats this trick at the end. After an exceptionally frenetic passage and a sledgehammer exclamation mark (‘sfff possibile’), the piece ends in deep quietude.

The soft tones fading away into nothingness create the impression of a collective sigh of relief: we’ve finally reached our goal…

#JohnAdams #MovementsForUsAndThem #NTRZaterdagmatinee #RadioFilharmonischOrkest #SamuelAdams

At Swim-Two-Birds: double concerto for violin & cello by Pascal Dusapin

‘I’ll never write a motif, rhythm, or chord that I cannot sing,’ Pascal Dusapin (Nancy, 1955) once said. And indeed, all his music has a vocal, cantabile quality. On Saturday 30 September the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra will première his concerto At Swim-Two-Birds for violin, cello, and orchestra in Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Soloists are the violinist Viktoria Mullova and the cellist Matthew Barley, to whom the piece is dedicated. The première is broadcast live on Radio 4, organizer of the concert series NTR ZaterdagMatinee.

As a child Dusapin was so impressed when he first heard a jazz trio, that he decided there and then to start playing the clarinet. From his tenth he developed a passion for organ, but only when he heard Arcana by Edgard Varèse, he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life composing.

Colourful tapestries

Instead of going to a conservatory – which he deemed too academic – Dusapin studied art history and aesthetics at the Sorbonne. He developed his compositional skills mainly on his own, yet did take some seminars with Iannis Xenakis between 1974 and 1978. He considered the Greek composer to be the living heir of Varèse. Unlike his heroes, he was not interested in using electronics in the compositional process. With purely physical instruments Dusapin creates highly organic music, full of colourful sound tapestries and lyrical solos.

He composed At Swim-Two Birds at the request of the violinist Viktoria Mullova and the cellist Matthew Barley. At first Dusapin had doubts about writing yet another piece for solo strings. Having recently finished both a violin and a cello concerto, he ‘felt a bit swamped by these two instruments’. When Mullova and Barley opined that the combination of a violin and a cello would make ‘a new instrument altogether’, he accepted the commission after all: ‘This changed everything.’

Extravagant narrative

While composing, Dusapin stumbled upon the experimental novel At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien from 1939. This is literally swarming with unlikely figures and characters, who in the end take over the initiative from the author. It is a mixture of farce, satire and fantasy and ranks as one of the important exponents of postmodern literature.

‘I was struck by the narrative and formal extravagance of this book’, says Dusapin. But though he took its title, he never intended his concerto to be a musical equivalent. Rather more he was taken in with the way the characters become entangled with each other. –  ‘And then, of course, there are two birds in the title…’.

Sensually intertwined

The number two not only applies to the soloists, but also to the form of the concerto. Instead of the current three, At Swim-Two-Birds has only two movements, both slow. Dusapin gives a lot of room to the soloists, who often play virtuoso solo lines against a silent orchestra. At other times the two ‘birds’ sensually intertwine in soaring duets, the orchestra moving in so cautiously you hardly notice they’re taking part in the argument.

The overall pace is slow, but towards the end vehement tapping on a tambourine triggers a faster tempo, while the dynamics become louder. The solo violin ‘breaks loose’ in staggeringly virtuosic figurations, giving the orchestra and fellow soloist the go-by. Yet they pull themselves together quickly, ‘overtaking’ the violin and restoring the quiet atmosphere. The concerto ends with softly rumbling drums and gongs, the string orchestra playing a chord that slowly fades away into nothingness.

I hope the actual performance will be as enchanting as is promised by the score.

Saturday 30 September, 2.15 p.m. Concertgebouw Amsterdam
Radio Filhamonisch Orkest / Markus Stenz
Ligeti: Lontano
Dusapin: At Swim-Two Birds
Larcher: Symphony nr.2 “Kenotaph’ (NL premiere)

Photo credit: Jean Radel

#AtSwimTwoBirds #MatthewBarley #NTRZaterdagMatinee #PascalDusapin #ViktoriaMullova