
SAN FRANCISCO — It is sneaking up on us that John Adams has become perhaps the most prolific living composer of piano concertos. By a conventional tally, his hot-off-the-press After the Fall — which received its world premiere (heard Jan. 19) in the hands of Icelandic piano star Vikingur Òlafsson, with David Robertson leading the San Francisco Symphony — is his third work in that format.
Actually, it is his fifth, if you count the early, once-controversial Grand Pianola Music — featuring two pianos — and the brief, contemplative Eros Piano. Adams is thus now in a tie with Beethoven and Prokofiev, though still far behind Mozart’s alleged 27 (the first four of which have been determined to be arrangements of other composers’ music).
So much for statistics, which are of great interest perhaps only to hard-core music buffs and sports fans. What’s more pertinent is that After the Fall is different from its two immediate full-length predecessors, Century Rolls and Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (I like Adams’ yen for oddball titles) — less boisterous, more flowing, immediately attractive, rolling along in a stream of consciousness.

The format is the traditional fast-slow-fast progression, like all of Adams’ piano concertos except Eros, though now in a continuous single movement with minimal changes in tempo. Unlike the pound-it-out opening of its immediate predecessor, Must the Devil (written for the steel fingers of Yuja Wang), and the mechanical start of Century Rolls (for Emanuel Ax), After the Fall begins with a spangled, sparkling orchestral intro into which the piano gradually gets more involved. Before long, the playing starts to become heavy, with sharp thrusts from the orchestra and patches of repetition. The texture thins out in the “slow” section, but unlike Must the Devil’s equivalent part, there is none of the earlier work’s underlying tension here as things continue to flow along evenly while absorbing a bit of a storm at one point.
Clearly, Adams tailored his material for the cerebral personality of Òlafsson, knowing that the pianist is making a name for himself internationally with his J.S. Bach performances and recordings. As the third part of the piece emerges, so does old J.S. himself in the form of the Prelude in C minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, which ever so gradually creeps into the piece, first with harmonies and then the actual notes. Adams then gradually reworks the notes in line with his own personality, rising to what would predictably have been a big finish but instead trailing off into repose.
The experienced Robertson tied all of this new and old music together into a tightly knit whole in Davies Symphony Hall, and Òlafsson played with thoughtful brilliance. As he has done repeatedly with Beethoven, Adams again has come up with a piece that mines the past and winningly deposits what he finds into his own idiom.

Leading into the new Adams concerto, Robertson led a perfectly placed, concentrated rendition of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question as a brief nod to the composer’s sesquicentennial. In this context, Ives’ quietly iconoclastic vision from 1906 sounded fittingly, and startlingly, contemporary.
Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, arguably the biggest draw for the concert, has taken a beating for decades from critics and pedants, but I’ve always loved it — for its insistent rhythms, its spectacular orchestral effects, its uninhibitedly exultant and dreamy choral passages, and its ultimately rebellious spirit. It had all of that and more working in high gear for this performance, with Robertson whipping up the exuberant passages and shaping the tranquil ones soulfully and sensuously.
Soprano Susanna Phillips, clad in a gown with precisely the red color called for in the text, gave a sweetly lingering performance, but I have to say that the highly regarded baritone Will Liverman’s expressive voice sounded rather small for this work, frequently drowned by the orchestral waves. Tenor Arnold Livingston Geis made an amusing entrance, solo, and exit as the roasted Swan.

The San Francisco Symphony Chorus, which survived an existential financial scare and a brief strike that canceled the orchestra’s season-opening Verdi Requiem performances in the fall of 2024, now has a new two-year contract thanks to an anonymous donation of $4 million — and they seemed to celebrate with a blazing showing. In lieu of a boys chorus, the San Francisco Girls Chorus did just fine on their own.
This live performance of Carmina Burana dared to display English-translated supertitles of the sometimes salacious Latin texts — and one could hear a few giggles in the audience.
And finally, it’s good to report that the San Francisco Symphony — criticized for downsizing future plans and about to lose its esteemed music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, at the close of this season as a result — still played like a world-class ensemble, with a dark, resoundingly solid bass end. Hope it stays that way.