The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Kazuki Yamada, delivered an elegant showcase of American composers at Symphony Hall, with John Adams' 1980 landmark work Harmonium as the centrepiece. The concert, part of the "Freedom 250" anniversary celebrations, drew a generously filled hall.
Framing the American Spirit
Yamada conceived the programme as two facing musical panels. The first opened with Aaron Copland's craggy Fanfare for the Common Man, leading directly into Copland's Lincoln Portrait. Soprano Janai Brugger delivered President Lincoln's own words with poised emphasis against a misty backdrop of middle-distance strings and yearning woodwind solos. The performance was beautifully balanced and paced, stirring the British audience to borrowed patriotism.
Feminist Statements and Broadway Flourishes
The parallel sequence prefaced the European premiere of Florence Price's 1941 song-cycle The Heart of A Woman, newly orchestrated by Lior Rosner, with Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman from 1987. Tower's piece, noisier than Copland's, is an unapologetic feminist statement, a musical refusal to apologise for taking up space. It was a perfect thematic curtain-raiser for Price, though stylistically it jolted from boisterous modernity to parlour sentimentality. The Price cycle, steered by texts of cloying sweetness from poets including Langston Hughes, leans into music theatre, tipping into Broadway with the flirtatious "Don't you tell me no" and offering full Technicolor in the rhapsodic "My dream" and gleaming fantasy "To my little son". Brugger sang richly, but the additional orchestral scale sometimes overburdened the miniatures' slight substance.
Harmonium's Maximal Minimalism
The concert's centrepiece, John Adams' Harmonium, is essentially a concerto for choir and orchestra, a not-so-short ride in a machine that bends time. It freeze-frames in "Because I could not stop for Death" and fast-forwards dizzily in "Wild Nights". Yamada's incisive energy suited the work well, though the CBSO Chorus felt timid and behind the beat. The performance will travel to the Proms later this month, where the full sonic juggernaut is anticipated.
