Ólafsson, Salonen, in U.K. Premiere of Adams Concerto

LONDON—The February 25 Philharmonia concert at London’s Festival Hall saw the welcome return of Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra’s conductor laureate, alongside pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. They were giving the U.K. premiere of After the Fall, John Adams’s fourth piano concerto and a work written especially for the Icelandic pianist. (Salonen and Ólafsson performed the world premiere in San Francisco last year.) 

Unlike his third concerto, the dazzling and virtuosic Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes, tailored to the strengths of pianist Yuja Wang, After the Fall plays to Ólafsson’s combination of delicacy and strength, with a special nod to his affinity for Bach. “He genuinely loves my music and knows all of it, not just the concertos,” Adams enthused in a program note.

Víkingur Ólafsson with the London Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen at Festival Hall

The theme of the work harks back to 2019, when the New York Times asked Adams for a response to Pierre Boulez’s recently published book Music Lessons. In it, the great French iconoclast had posited that idea that the avant-garde era had given way to a time of perpetual return, consolidation, and citation. For Adams, Boulez’s theory implied a kind of Miltonian catastrophe in which a generation of experimentalists had fallen from grace, while a new generation was left to scratch around, clinging to sentimental archetypes from the past and retreating into nostalgia and quotation. Needless to say, Adams disagreed, but looking back, it suggested a title for his new work with the double meaning of both the biblical fall and the season that precedes the onset of winter.

Written in a continuous 30-or-so-minte span, the concerto opens in a shimmer of vibraphone, celesta, and harp; Ólafsson gradually joined in with a series of wistful gestures on piano. This is a strange world, a magical space colored with the sound of tiny gongs, repetitive patterns on violins, and a lone, mournful horn.

Before long, the music becomes more agitated; Ólafsson remained cool as a cucumber, his touch firm yet clear. Thanks to composer, conductor, and orchestra, the keyboard sound cut effortlessly through textures that feel both substantial and at the same time diaphanous. Soon after, insistent figures in the piano herald a haunted noirish landscape with ethereal strings and rippling piano.

There is much here that can be described as vintage Adams—chugging rhythms, twitchy syncopations, sudden shifts from edgy and upbeat to a glacial calm. A slow section follows with chromatic descending figures on piano lending the sense of someone or something slowly falling. Ólafsson is a great listener, and his alertness to conductor and ensemble was in evidence throughout.

As the orchestra takes on new colors, the music arrives in a winter landscape where deconstructed fragments of the C minor Prelude from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier flutter and swirl. In a smart and seamless segue, Adams managed to link his personal, post minimalist sound world with the harmonic patterns and gear changes of Ólafsson’s beloved Bach.

As the pace picks up again, Ólafsson was off, the piano part climbing higher and higher with the orchestra in seeming pursuit (“Bach taking off into outer space,” was how he described it in a post-performance speech). All of a sudden there is a hush. The pianist stopped, his arms spread wide as if in surrender, leaving an insistent harp to tick away to nothing.

It's hard to sum up new music on one hearing, but a first encounter with After the Fall suggests an engrossing work that hopefully will soon be available on disc. Meanwhile, Ólafsson delighted the audience with his new arrangement of Bach’s Air on the G string. Written to celebrate the 100th birthday of György Kurtág, and played with a palpable love and humility, it made the perfect encore.

The second half was Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé given complete and with the Philharmonia Chorus on hand to supply the composer’s desired wordless vocals (a relative rarity in live performances). Salonen’s was an exceptional account rich with distinguished solo contributions from the Philharmonia, as if every player had been asked to find the most expressive means available to characterize the drama. Throughout, parallels could be drawn with Stravinsky’s music, both the three great ballets, but also the Russian composer’s neoclassical phase, which seemed to find pre-echoes in Ravel’s score. Both the Danse grotesque de Dorcon and the Act II pirates’ Danse guèrriere suggested the sorcerous Kashchei from The Firebird.

The hushed opening of Act I was magical, with harps, muted horn, and flute emerging over barely audible strings. Luxuriant crescendos, including the incisive entries of the chorus, were overwhelming. The swelling Danse religieuse was orgiastic in its abandon and there was a modern, almost jazzy swing to the youths and maidens’ Danse Générale. Along the way, Salonen was an eloquent advocate for the linking sections you don’t get to hear when, as is usually the case, the ballet is given incomplete.

In Act III, Salonen conjured a Mediterranean warmth and an ideal balance with the chorus for the famous Lever du jour (Sunrise). A lovely flute solo for the pantomime of Pan and Syrinx followed, before players and singers rose together with an ecstatic shout of joy in the concluding Bacchanale. A truly memorable performance.

_{Photos by Marc Gascoigne}

Víkingur Ólafsson was Musical America’s 2025 Instrumentalist of the Year