Concert
“Must the devil have all the good tunes”
By: John Adams
Conductor: Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Soloist: Víkingur Ólafsson
Stage: Gothenburg Concert Hall.
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The beauty of music has been a concern for Christianity since the days of the Church Father Augustine. In his “Confessions” he falters in the face of the “joys that hearing can bestow”, to be seized by a purely “sensual joy” and warns of the “danger” of enjoying.
When Martin Luther much later takes the seductive effect of music in defense, he does so with the rhetorical question: “Must the devil have all the best melodies?”
That question is also the title of John Adam’s third piano concerto premiered at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2019, with Yuja Wang as soloist and Gustavo Dudamel on the desk. And who this week got his first performance in Sweden – in Gothenburg Concert Hall, under the direction of Santtu-Matias Rouvali and with Víkingur Ólafsson as soloist.
Martin Luther’s question came to Adams as a very young man already in the late 50’s, in an article written by a Catholic activist. And thought it was coined by Chuck Berry. A creative misunderstanding would turn out to have generated a terribly thrilling piano concerto, which is inspired by Béla Bartók’s works in the same genre, which are colored by Hungarian folk music. Now Adam’s is American and distinctly urban, so in his work the references are taken from American popular music.
The opening is unmistakably “funky”, which also indicates the score. And one realizes that here awaits an excited journey through the neighborhood of sin, “red light districts” and honky tonk saloons. An atmosphere characterized by “the wild side of life” to which Adams borrowed Henry Mancini’s riff in the theme of the film “Peter Gunn” but made it far heavier, denser and more diabolical.
Víkingur Ólafsson and the orchestra play like crazy, even in the scorching beautiful and nocturnally glittering middle part. And gives the unstoppably propelling shuffle rhythm that is injected into the finale a bearing that can only be compared to that which arises in the most intoxicating rock’n’roll. Can believe that Luther and Chucken smile and smile a little in heaven.
Footnote: The concert will soon be available on GSO Play.
Read more concert reviews and other lyrics by Martin Nyström