Berliner Philharmoniker

At last year’s Musikfest Berlin, both Ensemble Modern and the San Francisco Symphony presented music by American composer John Adams. This year, the maestro himself will come to Berlin and give his debut as conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker. The programme features an Adams classic and one of his most recent pieces: The title of his orchestra work “Harmonielehre” (1985) may allude to Arnold Schönberg’s “Theory of Harmony”, published in 1911, the piece, however, refers to this epoch of departures in a more general way. Above all, in “Harmonielehre”, John Adams unleashes breath-taking orchestral powers with impulses of Minimal Music as well as broad arcs and glittering surfaces of sound. Even outings into Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal”-world can be detected. “Scheherazade.2”, John Adams’ “Dramatic Symphony” for violin and orchestra, presents the heroine of the Arabian Nights, not as a fairy-tale idyll, however, but rather as a critical reflection on violence against women worldwide. Once again, Adams proves himself to be an orchestral sound magician, surprising us with a cimbalom and even quoting Rimsky-Korsakov. Violinist Leila Josefowicz was the soloist at the world premiere of “Scheherazade.2” in New York in 2015.

John Adams [*1947]
Harmonielehre
for orchestra [1985]

Scheherazade.2
Dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra [2014/15] GP

Leila Josefowicz violin
Berliner Philharmoniker
John Adams conductor