When John Adams returns to the city to conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on November 6 and 9, it will be the third time he’s worked with the ensemble.
The American composer made his TSO debut in 2011 at the invitation of Peter Oundjian. John and conductor Peter Oundjian, the TSO’s Music Director from 2004 to 2018 and now conductor emeritus, have a longstanding friendship.
Oundjian’s initial invitation saw Adams come to Toronto for the then-annual New Creations Festival, an initiative of Peter’s. John conducted his City Noir, a TSO co-commission. “It’s a wonderful orchestra,” he says of his experience. He came back for the same festival in 2014, with his own music as a focal point, including the Canadian premiere of his 1996 piece Slonimsky’s Earbox. “I was able to do a substantial work of my own. Peter has been a supporter.”
John Adams, Composer
Now in his 70s, Adams’ path to becoming one of the most prominent composers of the modern era found its first spark in his own persistence.
“When I was a little kid, that was the great era of early Leonard Bernstein,” he recalls. “My parents didn’t want to get a television, because they thought I’d stop reading.”
That meant that he had to sneak to the neighbour’s next door to watch TV, and that’s where he first saw Bernstein’s famous Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. When he told his parents, both of whom were musicians, it convinced his mother to finally take the plunge and get a TV set of their own.
“That was an inspiration,” he said of the concerts, where he heard American popular songs played alongside the music of traditional classical composers. “That influenced me greatly; I was ten years old at the time.” It was 1956, the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.
“I grew up in a very small town in New Hampshire,” he says. He remembers reading a biography of Mozart’s written for children. That’s essentially what inspired him to become a composer.
“I was very lucky in that there was a community orchestra in the town where I grew up,” he notes.
That community orchestra is where he began taking music lessons and even got his start conducting at a summer music camp.
“By the time I got to college, I had […] experience in conducting.”
Studies at Harvard followed. There were two student orchestras at the university at the time, one of which was conducted by a student who got the job via an audition. Adams was able to earn that position.
“I started conducting at a relatively early age.” Still, student orchestras don’t necessarily prepare you for life in a professional environment, as he recalls. “When I think back to my first experiences with professional orchestras, I wince.”
He calls the art of conducting “extremely mysterious”. “It’s as much a social skill as it is a musical skill,” he says. That’s particularly true when you consider that the time spent rehearsing with professional orchestras is limited.
As a conductor, it means maintaining focus. “You have to get right to work. Musicians really don’t like to talk too much, other than saying the essential things.” However, as he points out, it’s still necessary to establish a connection of some kind. “We’ve come a long way from the era of Fritz Reiner and Toscanini… the autocrats.”
He’s aware of the realities that face orchestral musicians, which can vary by location. “I’ve been very spoiled throughout my adult career, because I get to work with the very best orchestras,” Adams says. He notes the long hours and precarious job security faced by many versatile and talented musicians in various parts of the world.
John Adams’ Frenzy
The concert includes the Canadian premiere of Adams’ Frenzy, a co-commission of the TSO, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Konzerthaus Dortmund, Philharmonie de Paris, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The piece received its world premiere with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, to whom it is dedicated, in March 2024.
“When we write a piece, the first thing we have to do is talk about it,” he says. “I call the piece Frenzy — I didn’t know what to call it when I started. It’s only really frenetic in the last couple of minutes,” he explains.
“I know I’m going to go to my grave […] apologizing for this title,” the composer says. Much of the piece, as he points out, is rather buoyant and colourful in nature.
“I wrote it for my friend Simon Rattle. We’ve known each other for over 40 years,” he explains. As such, he wrote for Rattle’s preferences. “I’m in a luxurious position of having the best conductors in the world doing my music,” he adds.
That fact keeps his music in performance in many concert halls around the world, in addition to his own performances as a composer/conductor, a fairly rare combination these days.
“Composers who conduct well are a very small crowd these days,” he acknowledges, although he points out it was commonplace in the 19th century. “It’s become much more of a complicated […] skill.” He cites Matthew Aucoin as another example of a contemporary artist who’s adept at both skillsets.
He’s pleased that Frenzy’s first Canadian performance will happen in Toronto. “I’m really delighted that the Toronto Symphony is a co-commissioner,” he says, citing his previous positive experiences working with Peter Oundjian.
The TSO was on Adams’ radar long before that, though.
“One of the big moments of musical discovery for me when I was a student was a recording of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie with Seiji Ozawa.” The recording, made in 1968 with the TSO during Ozawa’s tenure as Music Director, was highly praised by the composer himself.
This time around, in 2024, a connection emerges with the TSO’s executive director Mark Williams that stems from Williams’ previous gig as chief artistic and operations officer of the Cleveland Orchestra (2013 to 2022). Williams was instrumental in inviting Adams to Cleveland previously, and had a hand in arranging the co-commission that will make its Canadian premiere in Toronto on November 6.
Concert Repertoire
The first half of the concert includes Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso, along with Debussy songs performed by Anna Prohaska.
Soprano Anna Prohaska is one of the TSO’s Spotlight Artists for this season, along with Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki. Austrian-British lyric soprano Anna Prohaska is based in Berlin, where she studied at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. Professionally, she is a member of the permanent ensemble at the Berlin State Opera, and is a frequent collaborator with the Berlin Philharmonic. Among her many accolades and awards is an International Classical Music Award in the Baroque vocal category for her album Serpent & Fire in 2017.
She’ll be performing accompanied by Adams’ own orchestral arrangement of Debussy’s Le Livre de Baudelaire. “Usually they are done by a soprano,” he says. “If you read Beaudelaire, [though] it’s really a man talking about a woman.” Adams recalls performing it once with English tenor Ian Bostridge.
“It’s actually a group of five songs, rather early Debussy,” he says. “It ends so beautifully, just up in the stratosphere. I always felt, when playing them on the piano, that they were ready to be orchestrated. It’s just that Debussy never got around to it.”
He hears the influence of Wagner’s Parsifal in parts of it, a work that he’s also orchestrated, noting that during Debussy’s leaner years, he’d make extra money by accompanying singers as they practised their Wagner repertoire.
During the second half, Prohaska returns to sing “This is prophetic!” from Adams’ iconic opera Nixon in China.
“The excerpt from Nixon in China is one of my favourite compositions. The last time I heard it, Renee Fleming sang it in a new production in Paris,” he recalls. “It was amusing to see her dressed as Pat Nixon.”
He mentions the superlative text by Alice Goodman, calling it “one of the great opera librettos”. It goes beyond just words. “It’s full of images of what’s meaningful — simple American values,” he says.
“It’s ironic that I will be in Toronto on election day, when so many of those American values have been horribly corrupted,” he adds.
“I know that I will be deeply affected by those words.”
- Find more details about John Adams’ November 6 and 9 concert dates with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra [HERE].
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