deFilharmonie - Ed Spanjaard

In this concert deFilharmonie is concerned entirely with twentieth-century American music. John Adams composed his Violin Concerto in 1993. It signalled his striking return to the classical genre. He wrote this brilliant score in an astonishingly classical, or let's say exemplary, manner. Aaron Copland's 'Quiet City' was one of the works in which, in 1939, this New Yorker deliberately decided no longer to write for a 'specialised' contemporary music audience, but for the average music-lover. At the same time he wanted to try out whether "he was able to say what he wanted to say in the simplest imaginable terms". As a result of this radical change of course, Copland wrote less and less for the traditional concert hall, but proportionally more for schools, for the radio, for ballet companies and for the cinema. 'Quiet City', for example, was in the first place music for a stage play by Irwin Shaw, whose score Copland nevertheless transformed into a short concert piece in 1940. Copland's Third Symphony takes us to 1946 and here we hear the composer at his loudest, with prolonged sustained notes by the brass. Spectacular and hymnic in the style of Walt Whitman. Americana at its best.