John Adams

In terms of building it, probably it would be considerably more difficult.

I think that why it doesn't interest me as much as what happens with photography is because it is manifestly temporal in its own right, and I think that the question that, that would need to be asked would be, is there a way in which to allow sound to accrue that it was not just a really long eight-track tape? Is there a way in which sound could pile on top of sound, and that there could be some sort of a renormalizing process perhaps that would make it so it just didn't get more and more noisy, but that you would end up with some sort of a layered sound? It, it makes me, as I'm riffing here, it makes me think of what John Adams did for the sound of the atomic bomb at the end of Dr.

Atomic, where he made this sound by layering all the sounds he could possibly find.

And this was, I think, very interesting in a conceptual way in terms of how to think about sound.

Of course, I've also had influence now of the US.

So Steve Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass, also people that I have now had the honor to meet.

So I feel inspired.

very grateful for that influence and I think we will see like from small repertoire to big symphonic repertoire you know like when we play a Haydn symphony or Beethoven symphony and then we end in Poem of Ecstasy or Rite of Spring at the end of the season or Symphonic Dancers or Bruckner Symphonie.

Last night, their concert took place at the Philharmonie in Essen, Germany, with Manfred Honeck and Alexander Kantorow.

The program included John Adams again, the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, and the Dvorak Symphony Number Nine from the New World.

They are on their way to Vienna for the last two concerts, uh, in Austria at the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Manfred Honeck, Augustin Hadelich this evening, John Adams, the Barber Violin Concerto, and the Dvorak Symphony Number Nine.

Jim Cunningham had an opportunity to speak with the, the principal cellist, Anne Martindale Williams, and he spoke to her in Essen, Germany yesterday.

Anne Martindale Williams-

Jim Cunningham and speaking with principal cellist Anne Martindale Williams, who is retiring after 50 years with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

This wonderful tour that has been taking place, of course, on their way to Vienna.

So we first had this evening the main event was the Dvořák New World Symphony.

We had the, uh, Vienna Concert House hearing Augustín Hádlek playing a Barber Violin Concerto, Short Ride in a Fast Machine by John Adams, and then, uh, several encores.

Augustín Hádlek played the Schumann encore Träumerei, which is arranged, very delicate arrangement of the piano piece by Robert Schumann.

And then at the end of the evening, the Brahms Hungarian Dance Number One and Schubert's Litany for the Feast of All Souls, which ends with a prayer from Manfred Honeck, and he holds his arms in the air so there is no applause for the better part of a minute.

As the fellow said, it doesn't get much better than that.

We have her here just singing in John Adams' Nixon in America, in China, which Tara was involved in too.

Yeah, in January we're performing that with Rene and Thomas Hampson.

It's going to be very special.

Absolutely.

Anyway, let's have a listen.

This is John Adams, just to give you a little flavour.

The people are the heroes.

Thank you.

After the 9-11 World Trade Center attacks, the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center commissioned the American composer John Adams to write a piece commemorating the attacks for a special performance one year after, in 2002.

Adams wrote a work called On the Transmigration of Souls.

Transmigration, according to Adams, means a movement from one state of being to another.

When you are in pain, missing someone so, so much...

Listen to this.

John Adams on the transmigration of souls.

Missing.