This piece in the New Yorker explores how soon-to-be Director’s Guest John Adams offers new takes on the beloved form of concerto.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic recently introduced a new concerto by John Adams, titled “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?”

“The concerto begins in “trickster style,” with the soloist playing a funky ostinato modelled on Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme and a detuned honky-tonk piano adding offbeat accents. As this jollity grinds on, though, it takes on a machinelike brutality. A composer who has long used popular material to poke at the solemnity of the classical tradition here seems to be exposing the dominating urge behind much pop music. One hears echoes of apocalyptic episodes in Adams’s latter-day stage works: the doom-laden Corn Dance of “Doctor Atomic,” the malignant Americana of “Girls of the Golden West.””

Click here to read the full article.