VSO program of Shostakovich, Adams, and B.C.'s Nicholas Ryan Kelly feels perfectly attuned to our times, April 26 and 27
Taiwanese violin virtuoso Paul Huang and the Elektra Women’s Choir join concert that speaks eloquently to eco anxiety, peak oil, and dictatorship
Violinist Paul Huang. Photo by Marco Borggreve
Tausk Conducts Shostakovich and Adams takes place on April 26 and 27, at 8 pm at the Orpheum
NEXT WEEKEND’S VSO program feels perfectly attuned to the global tumult and anxieties of our times. That’s likely due to the fact that it’s comprised entirely of works by 20th-century and living composers.
Take the B.C. premiere of John Adams’s groundbreaking work, Harmonielehre, written in 1985 as a reaction against atonality—and pointedly named after the 1911 music theory textbook by Arnold Schoenberg, who pioneered the “twelve-tone” method of composition which did away with conventional tonalities. Adams was actually inspired to write the piece after having a vivid dream of witnessing an oil tanker turning vertical and shooting off into the skies: a subconscious rendering of peak oil, in its most literal form.
There’s also a performance by Taiwanese violin virtuoso Paul Huang of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, in A Minor. Written at a time of growing antisemitism in Soviet Russia, Shostakovich pointedly included a klezmer-style Scherzo, as well as a satirical takedown of dictatorship embedded into the last movement; a cheeky middle finger to the “anti-formalist” and personal attacks launched at him by Stalin. (As Mark Twain famously said, “History doesn’t always repeat, but it often rhymes.”)
Finally, the Elektra Women’s Choir will join with the orchestra for the world premiere of Earth, Beloved by B.C. composer Nicholas Ryan Kelly. Depending on the severity of your eco-anxiety, the work is bound to either deliver a moment of comfort or strike a bittersweet chord.
Performances take place this week at the Orpheum Theatre, April 26 and 27, at 8 pm.
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