Centre commission garners multiple performances

Composer John Adams with the members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet

Looking a bit like everyone’s favourite uncle, composer John Adams is perched in front of an audience of young musicians in the Centre’s Bentley Chamber Music Studio. Clad in a casual shirt and faded jeans, he rubs his beard as he considers a question about the challenges of writing for a string quartet.

“String quartet compositions,” he muses, “are like human conversation elevated to the sublime.” Then, with a rueful chuckle, he adds, “So, while there is joy in writing a quartet, it is more challenging than composing for an orchestra, where you can hide behind the trombones.”

There is a palpable buzz in the room as the questions continue. It’s not every day you get to query America’s top classical composer about his latest work.

Best known for large-scale operatic and orchestral works such as Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic, and On the Transmigration of Souls (which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music), Adams is at The Banff Centre for the Canadian premiere of his String Quartet.

Composed for the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and commissioned by the Juilliard School with support from Stanford Lively Arts and The Banff Centre, String Quartet has already achieved significant success. Since its New York premiere in January 2009, the St. Lawrence has secured over a dozen performances and the Banff performance was broadcast cross-Canada on CBC Radio 2 — a remarkable track record for a new classical composition. During his stay in Banff, Adams and the quartet also worked with producer Judith Sherman and the Centre’s Audio department to complete a String Quartet recording for Nonesuch Records.

The Banff Centre performance on October 3 was String Quartet’s Canadian premiere. It brought the audience to their feet, but a day after the performance Adams confessed he found the experience nerve-wracking. While he expressed absolute confidence in the St. Lawrence’s virtuosity, he describes watching an audience hear his work for the first time as “excruciating.”

“Any encounter with a new work of art is challenging. You leave the experience not entirely sure of what you heard. Art is something that pushes the envelope. It is complex. It’s not like a sound bite or a TV commercial, which you can understand on first encounter.”

Now, fielding questions from the musicians in the Centre’s fall residency program, Adams reflects on how great music must both satisfy and confound. “Successful compositions balance fulfillment and surprise. To be coherent, there must be repetition, some form of pattern repetition, something you can hold on to. But great composers, like Mahler, also deliver a sense of adventure; they surprise us in how they fulfill our expectations.”

“The challenge in writing a new work like this is to create a new language and, at the same time, maintain enough familiar reference points to communicate.”

Adams says he found a particular satisfaction in writing for the St. Lawrence. “What is extraordinary about this quartet is that they can play in absolute unity, and at the same time remain completely differentiated as individual musical voices. Along with being great musicians, what is special is how aware they are of each other – that sense of a dynamic ongoing conversation.”

Later that evening, over a beer in the Centre’s pub, violinist Geoff Nuttall admits the quartet was at once thrilled, and perhaps just a little anxious at undertaking a new work by America’s pre-eminent classical composer. After commissioning Quartet as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, they received a first draft in October 2008. “The first thing we did,” Nuttall says, “was look for all the hard parts.”

Nuttall describes playing String Quartet as a “full body experience.” Composed in two movements, the work is at once lyrical and propulsive, with themes and phrasing reminiscent of Ravel merged with a driving, almost rock-like, rhythmic intensity.

“As musicians our job is always to serve the composer,” Nuttall says. “So to work closely with a living composer of Adams’s stature was amazing. You watch music being born.”

“What’s challenging about any new work is that it takes time to figure out how it should sound,” adds cellist Christopher Costanza. “It’s not like you grew up listening to the recording or attending live performances.We were fortunate to be able to work directly with John as he perfected the piece.”

Both Nuttall and Costanza are confident that String Quartet will become part of the contemporary canon. “With most new works,” Costanza says, “concert bookers are not particularly interested in adding it to their program. But a new piece by John Adams gets a different reaction.”

“What’s cool about String Quartet is that the more time you invest, the more it pays off. It’s worth the effort.”

You can listen to the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s Banff Centre performance of String Quartet on the CBC Radio 2 Concerts on Demand website. The Banff Centre co-commissioned String Quartet as part of its 75th anniversary celebration, with support from the Kahanoff Foundation. John Adams will return to The Banff Centre in summer 2010 as a composer-in-residence.

And be sure to mark your calendars for the 2010 Banff International String Quartet Competition August 30 – September 5, supported by RBC Foundation.