John Adams and London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican, review: Leila Josefowicz redeems Adams's patchy Sheherazade.2

Josefowicz is a virtuoso of the old school, and the sheer beauty of her concluding flight cast a redeeming aura over all that had gone before

(Deborah O’Grady )

Using a term borrowed from Berlioz, John Adams describes his Scheherazade.2 as a ‘dramatic symphony’ (‘violin concerto’ would have served just as well), and he prefaced its London premiere with some fervently right-on remarks. It was, he said, ‘the story of a woman struggling for her life’, and it had been inspired by countless shocking instances in the news from Afghanistan, the Middle East, and even from America.

It wasn’t a political piece, he insisted, but – like the two Ravel works with which he and the LSO had opened their concert (Mother Goose and the Pavane pour une infante defunte) – it had ‘tiny hints of narrative’ threaded through. He had dedicated it to Leila Josefowicz, his ideal contemporary Scheherazade, and here she was to play it.

(Margaretta Mitchell)

Its opening movement was so busy with competing string voices that structure was hard to discern, and it worked itself into such a synthetic fury that one was put in mind of Stravinsky’s deflating dictum, ‘music can express nothing’. The second movement was a charming and Messiaen-influenced exercise with a soaring solo for the violin, while the third (entitled ‘Sheherazade and the men with beards’) saw the soloist triumphing with the aid of a tintinnabulation of gongs and chimes.

Now in her full maturity, ex-prodigy Josefowicz is a virtuoso of the old school, and the sheer beauty of her concluding flight cast a redeeming aura over all that had gone before.