“It felt as though someone had tailored a perfect suit for me without taking my measurements,” says Víkingur Ólafsson of John Adams’ *After the Fall*.
A concert that he knew the American minimalist would one day write for him… In the year of Adams’ 80th birthday, the two friends are going on tour with the work, which premiered in San Francisco in 2025. It is as much a tribute to Ólafsson’s artistry and his love of Bach as it is a ‘typical Adams’. Echoes of film music, the sophisticated interplay of orchestral timbres and, not least, the rhythmic drive that also characterises the other works on the programme for this concert evening: *Shaker Loops*, *The Chairman Dances* and the dizzying *Short Ride in a Fast Machine*, which, of course, is an absolute must at a birthday concert for the master of minimal music.
London Symphony Orchestra; Víkingur Ólafsson – piano; John Adams – conductor
John Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine / The Chairman Dances / After the Fall> (Source: KTK Heinersdorff)
