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John Adams Leila Josefowicz VIOLINJOHN CONCERTO ADAMS LEILA JOSEFOWICZ ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY David Robertson John Adams Violin Concerto (1993) 1. = 78 2. Chaconne: Body throughq which the dream flows 3. Toccare Leila Josefowicz, violin St. Louis Symphony David Robertson, conductor John Adams Violin Concerto The sloped wooden walls of the modern concert hall more often resemble Adams devoted the early 1990s to a group of instrumental works, El Dorado abstract curves of the human body than a work of acoustical science. Subtle (1991), Chamber Symphony (1992), and the Violin Concerto (1993), each more geometrical details enhance sound amplification by reverberation, ushering chromatic and contrapuntally complex than the last. He began composing vibrations to the feet, legs, arms, and chests of listeners. Architects of such the concerto in 1992, inspired by a rising figure that unfolds in seemingly spaces seek to maximize how surfaces disperse sound waves into and through endless succession. “I had an image of a very regular, slowly repeating wave the body. The idea of shepherding physical energy through sound has long form, a staircase wave that goes up and down,” he said. “There’s a certain attracted John Adams, whose 1993 Violin Concerto confronts the very sonic predictability to it. Over that the solo melodic line floats in a very free, conundrum faced by the concert hall architect: how to make a single violin line rhapsodic way. That largely is the ‘topos,’ not only of the first movement, but resonate above a mass of instruments. Adams’s solution involved the headlong also the entire concerto, with the violin a free spirit that moves above this embrace of the instrument’s visceral intensity. The resulting physicality of the work structurally coherent orchestral voice.” was precisely what drew violinist Leila Josefowicz to it in the late 1990s. Since then, she has dedicated the majority of her creative life to playing new music. As the work moves into the second movement, the musical language becomes more intimate, a slow meditation on the antique musical device the Josefowicz has played nearly 100 performances of Adams’s Violin Concerto. chaconne. Used in western music for more than four centuries, the chaconne, The two-decade-long friendship between Adams and Josefowicz resulted typically seen in the form of a triple meter ostinato motif, represents an in a more recent companion work, Scheherazade.2, a “dramatic symphony emotional archetype we have learned to associate with psychological states for violin and orchestra,” written specifically for her in 2015. “In a way, ranging from elevated yearning to sinking grief. Its recirculating motion links Scheherazade.2 is a kind of portrait of Leila, and there’s no doubt in my mind it to not only the first movement of the concerto but also to a kind of that much of it was inspired by the phenomenal way she performs the earlier spaciousness that is essentially operatic. “It’s one of the few instances up to Violin Concerto,” Adams said in January 2018. “In the world of classical music that point in time where I used an archaic found object, a so-called artifact you have big-name soloists who perform familiar repertoire and will once in from the musical past,” Adams said. “The only other example before then a while dip a toe into a new work. But Leila is remarkable because she plays would be that of the Gymnopédie in The Death of Klinghoffer (1991).” Whereas new works so many times that not only does she do enormous advocacy the reimagining of Satie’s Gymnopédie as Klinghoffer’s body falls into the for the piece but she has given prestige to the idea of a great soloist with sea imitates a sanctuary-like art installation, Adams’s use of the chaconne charisma and intelligence devoting her life to the music of her own time.” in the Violin Concerto evokes a different kind of inward turn, that of the individual defining herself alongside a deep, ancestral musical structure that Premiered by Jorja Fleezanis, for whom it was composed, the Violin Concerto has been materialized and rematerialized through time. was first recorded by Gidon Kremer with the London Symphony in 1994. Since then, Adams has himself conducted the work numerous times, always For Adams, a single word or image can awaken a range of creative possibilities. carefully modifying it in response to performer feedback, including that of While composing the second movement, he found himself drawn to the title Josefowicz, a practice that characterizes an important part of his creative of the Robert Hass poem “Body through which the dream flows.” “I thought process. In preparation for this current Nonesuch recording, he considered it was extremely evocative,” Adams said. “The idea was the orchestra, additional adjustments. “I thought I’d try to make the synthesizer parts less particularly the repeated chaconne line, was a body, a palpable entity, prominent,” Adams said. “For example, there’s a sampled harp, and it has and the violin was a dream that flows through that tissue.” As in the first a brittle sound. I tried rescoring it for real harp but realized that the brittle movement, the music moves through and between the fixed and the free, sound is part of the personality of the piece. It wouldn’t be the same without the permanent and impermanent, a reflection on the interconnectedness of it.” The work thus preserves its original structures while at once evolving body, mind, and spirit. “It was one of the first instances,” Adams noted, alongside the performers who bring it to life. “What makes this recording “where I used a software algorithm that allowed me to put in something special is Leila,” Adams maintains. “It’s a document of her long relationship like the chaconne line and expand it or contract its length by an arbitrary with the piece.” percentage like 77% or 115%. You can see the phrase lines shrinking and expanding, kind of like breathing organisms in the course of the movement.” Adams’s musical language at once grounds itself in the historical past (the concerto form, chaconne, and toccata) and the tactile present (pulsating energies, constantly shifting sonorities, and the use of modern technology). The music oscillates between these identities, calling to mind the Latin idem, which connotes sameness, and ipse, which indicates change. “It’s a stylistically puzzling piece,” he reflected, “because the first movement is very chromatic, and some of the violin writing is rugged and gnarly. The second movement is very tonal and dreamlike, and the last movement is an emphatically familiar trope of fast perpetual motion, in other words, a toccata. It’s not a perfect package, but then few pieces are, which is why it needs a magnificent soloist like Leila to provide the necessary unity.” Josefowicz celebrates the challenge. Her visceral response to the Violin Concerto, both inside the sweeping, sloped walls of the concert hall and in recording, is technically engrossing. She brings to the work physical force and vitality, actualizing a vision of spontaneity and independence, of the body luminescent. —Alice Miller Cotter ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY FIRST VIOLINS SECOND VIOLINS VIOLAS CELLOS DOUBLE BASSES David Halen Alison Harney Beth Guterman Chu Daniel Lee Erik Harris David Robertson Concertmaster Principal Principal Principal Principal Music Director Heidi Harris Kristin Ahlstrom Kathleen Mattis Melissa Brooks Carolyn White Associate Concertmaster Associate Principal Associate Principal Associate Principal Associate Principal Celeste Golden Boyer Eva Kozma Jonathan Chu David Kim Christopher Carson Second Associate Concertmaster Assistant Principal Assistant Principal Assistant Principal Assistant Principal Erin Schreiber Andrea Jarrett Gerald Fleminger Anne Fagerburg David DeRiso Assistant Concertmaster Rebecca Boyer Hall Susan Gordon Elizabeth Chung Sarah Hogan Kaiser Dana Edson Myers Nicolae Bica Leonid Gotman James Czyzewski Donald Martin Jessica Cheng Deborah Bloom Morris Jacob Alvin McCall Ronald Moberly Charlene Clark Janet Carpenter Chris Tantillo Bjorn Ranheim Ann Fink Lisa Chong Shannon Farrell Williams Yin Xiong HARP Emily Ho Elizabeth Dziekonski Christian Woehr Allegra Lilly Silvian Iticovici Ling Ling Guan Xi Zhang Principal Second Associate Jooyeon Kong Alyssa Beckmann ◊ Concertmaster Emeritus Asako Kuboki Laura Reycraft ◊ Helen Kim Wendy Plank Rosen Joo Kim Shawn Weil Melody Lee Xiaoxiao Qiang Angie Smart Hiroko Yoshida FLUTES ENGLISH HORN BASSOONS TRUMPETS TIMPANI MUSIC LIBRARY Mark Sparks Cally Banham Andrew Cuneo Karin Bliznik Shannon Wood Elsbeth Brugger Principal Principal Principal Principal Librarian Andrea Kaplan CLARINETS Andrew Gott Thomas Drake Thomas Stubbs Henry Skolnick Associate Principal Scott Andrews Associate Principal Associate Principal Associate Principal Assistant Librarian Jennifer Nitchman Principal Felicia Foland Jeffrey Strong Roberta Gardner Ann Choomack Diana Haskell Vincent Karamanov Michael Walk PERCUSSION Library Assistant Associate Principal William James PICCOLO Tina Ward CONTRABASSOON TROMBONES Principal STAGE STAFF Ann Choomack Tzuying Huang Vincent Karamanov Timothy Myers John Kasica Jack Snider Jennifer Nitchman Timothy Zavadil ◊ Principal Thomas Stubbs Stage Manager HORNS Amanda Stewart Joseph Clapper OBOES E-FLAT CLARINET Roger Kaza Associate Principal KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS Assistant Stage Manager Jelena Dirks Diana Haskell Principal Jonathan Reycraft Principal* Ron Bolte, Jr. Principal Thomas Jöstlein Peter Henderson ◊ Stage Technician - Sound Philip Ross BASS CLARINET Associate Principal BASS TROMBONE Nina
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