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From:
Janos Gereben <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Moderated Classical Music List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 8 Aug 2006 08:58:51 -0700
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[From www.sfcv.org.]

   Thomas Ades had warned America ("weak from f... and drink") that
   the end is near, as "the just, coming from the east... will burn
   all the land... all the sky." The destruction will be by "good
   soldiers" whose reward "shall be that they will have in Heaven
   eternal glory."

   In Ades' "America (a Prophecy)," the mezzo sings a sick valentine
   to this country: May you all suffer the pains of the damned
   -"Burn, burn, burn. On earth we shall burn. We shall turn to ash
   [which] shall drift across the land... Weep, but know this well:
   Ash feels no pain."
   
   Is this work - scheduled for its West Coast premiere at the
   Cabrillo Music Festival on Aug. 12 - just a horribly tasteless
   musical comment on 9/11? No, the really spooky thing is that
   Ades wrote it two years before 2001, on commission from the New
   York Philharmonic, as a "message for the Millennium." Kurt Masur
   conducted the U.S. premiere on Nov. 11, 1999. (I heard it at a
   London performance, conducted by Ades, in 2002, post 9/11, and
   much more disturbing.)

   Unlike the bizarre story surrounding it, the 15-minute piece
   itself is a simple affair, mostly a pastiche, running in place,
   looking for some cohesion or meaning. It has achieved a kind of
   "succes de scandale," similar to his loathsome "Powder Her Face"
   that Kent Nagano had premiered with the Berkeley Symphony, in
   advance of its staged American premiere in Aspen.
   
   Ades, whose The Tempest is being performed at the Santa
   Fe Opera currently, is due again here in December, at a personal
   appearance and for piano recital with San Francisco Performances
   (www.performances.org), where he will have a brief residency.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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