Adams Dr Atomic Lindberg
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited February 2006 2006/1 Kurtág Included in this issue: Adams Dr Atomic van der Aa John Adams’s Doctor Atomic received its much-heralded world premiere at wins New opera After Life San Francisco Opera on 1 October, before an audience of expectant opera-goers opens Holland Festival and critics from more than a dozen countries. Grawemeyer Adams’s long-time collaborator Peter Sellars Hungarian composer György Kurtág has provided Doctor Atomic’s libretto and won the 2006 University of Louisville staging, and Donald Runnicles conducted a Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition superb cast led by baritone Gerald Finley as for his ‘…concertante…’ for violin, viola and J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Sellars orchestra. The Grawemeyer Award, worth production is set to travel widely in coming $200,000, is granted annually by the years, with its European premiere scheduled Grawemeyer Foundation for a work that by Netherlands Opera for the Holland makes an outstanding contribution to the Festival in June 2007, and further stagings in field of musical composition. 2008 at English National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. ‘…concertante…’ was premiered in 2003 by violinist Hiromi Kikuchi and violist Ken Hakii Nyman “Doctor Atomic is J. Robert Oppenheimer, who accompanied by the Danish Radio led a group of acclaimed scientists in the Music for The Libertine Orchestra under Michael Schonwandt. remarkable race to build the world’s first nuclear Since then, the 25-minute score has been starring Johnny Depp weapon. The opera focuses on the bomb’s secret test in summer 1945 in the New Mexico desert. performed in Austria, France, Germany, When, at the end, the test succeeds, so do Japan, the Netherlands and the USA. Adams and Sellars, forcing us to face exactly Forthcoming Kurtág events in London what that mushroom cloud means… Make no mistake, Doctor Atomic is a magnificent include a series of concerts at the Wigmore accomplishment that easily takes its place Hall in Autumn 2006 featuring artists alongside the other Adams-Sellars triumphs — including the composer and his wife as Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and El pianists, Thomas Adès and the Keller Niño — and in important respects goes beyond Quartet. them. It contains music of unearthly splendour and gorgeous lushness, and its rich expressivity Kurtág celebrates his 80th birthday on will take many hearings to absorb.” Los Angeles Times 19 February 2006. Photo: San Francisco Opera / Terrence McCarthy “…a beautiful provocative Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley) and the bomb in Doctor Atomic at San Francisco Opera Turnage work that refreshes the Håkan Hardenberger tours “Since Britten’s death some 30 years ago, the are John Donne’s, the music is the creation of repertoire.” The Times American composer John Adams has emerged America’s greatest living composer, and the From the Wreckage as the most powerful voice in the creation of scene compresses all the terror and fascination of “Doctor Atomic, Mr. Adams’s third full-fledged opera… Doctor Atomic is a moving and the opera’s subject into eight minutes of opera, may be his most inventive and emotional compelling work of moral, as well as musical, wrenching, sinewy musical genius… a major score to date… Whole spans of the orchestral grandeur… one is left with a sense of the terrible addition to the operatic repertory of this new and choral music tremble with textural density… magnificence of atomic fission as well as its century.” San Francisco Chronicle unimaginable destructiveness.” Daily Telegraph You hear evocations of sci-fi film scores and The next stage collaboration between John bursts of Varèsian frenzy. When he needs to propel the music forward, Mr. Adams, true to For many the opera’s highlight was Adams and Peter Sellars, A Flowering Tree, form, creates a din of pummelling rhythms, Oppenheimer’s aria at the end of Act I is scheduled to be unveiled in Vienna on fractured metres and jolting repeated figures: call which provides the centrepiece of the 13 November as part of the Mozart 250th it atomic Minimalism. Yet tension runs even moral and psychological drama: celebrations. The work is commissioned by through the long, ruminative, wistful episodes, like “Oppenheimer begins to sing, pouring out his the Vienna Festival, Barbican Centre, San the poignant bedtime scene between soul in stark, anguished, cantorial phrases. The Francisco Symphony, Lincoln Center for the Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty.” New York Times words – ‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God’ – Performing Arts, and the Berlin Philharmonic. Photo: Andrea Felvégi Carter Three Illusions premiere acclaimed in Boston Celebrations for Steve Reich’s 70th birthday on 3 October 2006 are already underway, with surveys of his output around the world. Lindberg Boosey & Hawkes has worked closely with performing organisations and venues to co- ordinate Reich@70 events. The calendar includes Sculpture in LA a London retrospective and rare collaborations between presenters in both New York and Los Angeles. “The score is sophisticated yet immediately engrossing… The bouncy fanfare figures are not For full information visit www.reich70.com Photo: © Jeffrey Herman blatant but more like a filigree. The instrumental texture is often fast-moving and complex. A Sibelius sense of mysterious winds blowing European Tour (ECHO) 18 March – 3 April 2006 everything around is strong at first…” A new collaboration between Steve Reich and choreographer Akram Khan, Variations for “In the middle, Sculpture turns into a miniature Vibes, Piano and Strings, features the London Sinfonietta conducted by Bradley Lubman. concerto for orchestra, focusing on different European Concert Halls Organisation (ECHO) venues include Philharmonie Cologne, Cité de la instrumental sections competing to be the most Musique Paris, Palais des Beaux Arts Brussels, Konzerthaus Vienna, Concertgebouw dazzling. At the end the organ came rumbling in, lingering “Zarathustra”-like in its low register. Amsterdam, Symphony Hall Birmingham, Megaron Athens. The tour programme also includes Photo: Kira Gluschkoff Tubas and other brass instruments took positions Sextet and Different Trains. Esa-Pekka Salonen and Magnus Lindberg around the hall…The piece climaxes with rousing Stravinskyan rhythms. The score’s 23 minutes fly 1/4 March 2006 Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Kronos Magnus Lindberg’s new orchestral work, Barcelona by. The performance was spectacular.” Reich feature at Festival de Musiques Contemporanies Quartet and Bang on a Can. Highlights includes staging Sculpture, received its premiere on of The Cave, a dance triple bill and the world premiere of Los Angeles Times including Music for Eighteen Musicians performed by 6 October with the Los Angeles Barcelona 216. Daniel Variations for ensemble. Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka 3 October – 4 November 2006 The orchestral writing is Los Angeles 25–30 March 2006 New York Salonen. The score was inspired by Frank “ 70th celebrations at BAM Next Wave festival, Carnegie Reich works at Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Minimalist Gehry’s architecture for Disney Hall and that of a master.” Los Angeles Times Jukebox festival, curated by John Adams, include Hall and Lincoln Center featuring Steve Reich & Musicians, Kronos Quartet and London Sinfonietta Lindberg’s music explores the sonic spaces Variations for winds, strings and keyboard, Three Sculpture is scheduled on 17 May by the Movements and Tehillim. of the new concert venue. As well as Portugal/France 12–18 November 2006 deploying antiphonal brass in the final Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Copenhagen 28 March 2006 Steve Reich & Musicians tour of Daniel Variations including Casa da Mùsica in Porto and Cité de la section, the work as a whole reconfigures Christoph Eschenbach and performances Tivoli Hall plays host to all-Reich programme including by European orchestras are planned in the Scandinavian premiere of You Are (Variations) Musique in Paris. the orchestra from the bass register upwards, eliminating violins altogether: London and Helsinki. Orchestras wishing to Baden-Baden 7/9 April 2006 Los Angeles 20 January – 4 February 2007 programme the work or seeking perusal Two concerts by Ensemble Modern at the Festspielhaus Reich festival across Los Angeles. Performers include the “The result is a lot of low instruments — pairs of include City Life, Tehillim, Triple Quartet and Music for LA Philharmonic and LA Master Chorale. scores are invited to contact contrabassoons, pairs of tubas and Wagner [email protected]. Future Eighteen Musicians tubas, pairs of pianos and harps mellowing out If you are planning Reich events and would the whoops for joy. The violas are the highest Lindberg commissions include a new London 28 September – 8 October 2006 orchestral work for the Berlin Philharmonic Reich retrospective at Barbican features Steve Reich & like them included in our calendar please strings… Disney Hall is especially happy with bass Musicians, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC email [email protected] notes, and Lindberg gave it its fill.” and Simon Rattle. Michel van der Aa’s opera, After Life, opens the van der Aa Holland Festival on 2 June. The composer Floyd discusses his new stagework, based upon a After Life Photo: Ben van Duin remarkable film exploring the nature of memory. Susannah designer, so I can bounce ideas off them. I like opera that can draw you in close, which has an intimacy, in Wexford far removed from traditional grand opera. The drama can be just as powerful, even when it deals with Audiences and press concurred that Floyd’s ordinary people. This is the operatic area I want to Susannah was the hit of the 2005 Wexford Festival, explore, finding new angles and stretching the where the production proved the opera to be just as vocabulary. vivid and moving in a small theatre as at The Met. Though regularly performed throughout North Left: Scene from Hirokazu Kore-Eda's 1998 film After Life America, and having enjoyed major recent stagings in Vienna, Berlin, Geneva and Nantes, the opera awaits new productions in many European cities, and van der Aa “hopefully Wexford’s staging will have enough impact After Life (2004–06) to establish the piece more firmly”.