John Adams conducts festival concerts with the Hallé
The John Adams festival in Manchester, running 30 October to 1 November, sees the composer conducting concerts with the Hallé orchestra. The four-concert event features 11 Adams works, with highlights including the UK premiere of The Rock You Stand On, dedicated to long-standing champion of his music, Marin Alsop.
The Hallé presents a three-day festival devoted to John Adams with the composer travelling to Manchester to conduct a pair of concerts at Bridgewater Hall on 30 October and 1 November, plus a lunchtime chamber concert at Hallé St Peters and a performance by musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music on 31 October. Repertoire for this event, one of the most extensive European celebrations of Adams's music in recent years, ranges from his two-piano work Hallelujah Junction up to the full symphonic splendour of his violin concerto Scheherazade.2. The festivities will end with the UK premiere of his most recent orchestral work The Rock You Stand On, following performances in Philadelphia and Katowice.
John Adams commented: “I'm very proud of my history with the Hallé orchestra. I first conducted them in the days before The Bridgewater Hall opened. And several years later, for that celebratory opening of the Hall, Kent Nagano conducted the world premiere of Slonimsky's Earbox, which I composed for the event. I'm pleased to bring 'Slonimsky' back as well as being able to introduce other pieces of mine, both old and new, to the Hallé audiences. I'm especially looking forward to having the Hallé Choir perform my choral symphony, Harmonium, to having my longtime collaborator Leila Josefowicz play Scheherazade.2 (written for her) and to ending these concerts with the UK premiere of my most recent orchestra piece, The Rock You Stand On.”
The composer dedicated The Rock You Stand On to conductor Marin Alsop who has been a long-term champion of his music. “The title is non-specific”, Adams notes, “but perhaps hints at the qualities – loyalty, determination, devotion – that make Marin so very special to me. She is one of the very few conductors whom I can trust to do the right thing with what I’ve written. She knows what I want. She ‘gets it’.”
Marin Alsop conducted the world premiere of The Rock You Stand On with The Philadelphia Orchestra on 3 October and the European premiere a week later with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. Following the UK premiere in Manchester, performances are announced in New York on 31 March, Houston on 18 April, Vienna on 30 April and Chicago on 4 June, with further performances planned for Adams’s 80th birthday year in 2027.
Approximately 10 minutes in length, The Rock You Stand On unfolds in a single continuous movement. Adams describes it as having “a certain ‘big band’ quality”, with pulsating rhythms and irregular, bouncing figures passed throughout the orchestra and propelled by an underlying jazz-inflected pulse. The work was co-commissioned by a distinguished consortium of institutions – The Philadelphia Orchestra, Bravo! Vail, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Hallé, London Symphony Orchestra, and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, with more to be announced.
Thursday 30 October, 7.30 pm
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Slonimsky’s Earbox
Le Livre de Baudelaire (Debussy, orch. Adams)
This is Prophetic! from Nixon in China
Harmonium
Mary Bevan, soprano /
The Hallé / Hallé Choir /
John Adams
Friday 31 October, 1.00 pm
Hallé St Peters, Manchester
Chamber Symphony
Hallelujah Junction
John’s Book of Alleged Dances
Eliza McCarthy, James McVinnie, piano /
Musicians from the Hallé and RNCM /
Euan Shields
Friday 31 October, 7.30 pm
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
My Father Knew Charles Ives
RNCM Symphony Orchestra /
Clark Rundell
Saturday 1 November, 7.30 pm
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Scheherezade.2
The Chairman Dances
The Rock You Stand On (UK premiere)
Leila Josefowicz, violin / The Hallé /
John Adams
> Visit the Hallé orchestra website
Other Adams highlights this autumn have included the US premiere of Frenzy: a short symphony by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, followed by a tour to South Korea, Japan and Taiwan (22-28 Oct). Semyon Bychkov conducts the Czech premiere with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague (5 Nov). This season brings further performances of Adams’s recent piano concerto After the Fall with Vikingur Ólafsson as soloist in Miami (17/18 Jan), Los Angeles (23-25 Jan) and London (25 Feb).
Next spring sees a revival of Opéra de Paris’s production of Nixon in China, with Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming returning as the Presidential couple (24 Feb). Adams’s most recent stagework Antony and Cleopatra receives its German premiere in Koblenz (9 May) and there are new stagings this season of Doctor Atomic in Freiburg (29 Nov) and of The Death of Klinghoffer directed by Luca Guadagnino opening the Maggio Musicale in Florence (19 Apr).
> Further information on Work: The Rock You Stand On
Photo: Musacchio, Ianniello & Pasqualini