SEATTLE – Rather than propose a grand narrative of American music, the Seattle Symphony’s all-American program on Nov. 20 with guest conductor Lawrence Renes set three sharply contrasting voices side by side: Copland’s atmospheric Quiet City, Steven Mackey’s brand-new saxophone concerto Anemology, and John Adams’ ever-astonishing Harmonielehre — a lineup that underscored how differently American composers have approached the orchestra over the past century.
Mackey frames his new concerto around the concept of wind itself — the way a saxophonist’s manipulation of air and breath can generate not just sound but whole musical structures. “It seems improbable that a vibrating column of air directed by a saxophonist through a brass tube to produce varying frequencies at varying intervals of time could make us feel anything … other than a breeze,” he writes in his preface to the score.
He chose the eccentric title Anemology — an obsolete term from 18th-century meteorology referring to the study of wind movement — because, as he explained in a recent interview with local radio host Michael Schell, the soloist uses wind in myriad ways so that the instrument “sings, dances, has percussive possibilities, howls maniacally, and transcends.”
Anemology also reflects another long-running thread in Mackey’s musical thinking: his fascination with irregular, physically felt grooves. He points to his lifelong passion for mogul skiing, which he sees as sharing with music a “joy of motion and a dance with invisible forces like wind, gravity, and tonality.”
That same sensibility shapes his approach to the concerto format that is clearly favored in his prolific catalogue — and to the “underdog” instruments Mackey gravitates toward. Here, the catalyst is saxophonist Timothy McAllister, a longstanding collaborator whose charismatic virtuosity and command of color and articulation have undeniably influenced the work’s conception.
Mackey adopts the usual fast-slow-fast design of a traditional concerto, yet the character of Anemology feels anything but conventional. Its sensibility grows directly out of the musical rapport he and McAllister have developed together — a shared palette of timbre, gesture, and extended technique that gives each movement a particular profile.
The alto saxophone shapes the outer movements. “Spindrift,” as the first movement is titled, puts the soloist in the spotlight immediately, instructing the saxophonist to play with “breathy subtone, blowing from the other side of the hill.” McAllister established a vivid presence at once, fluidly navigating the score’s range of special effects, from flutter-tonguing to a rhythm-and-blues sound known as the “Texas wobble” and abundant multiphonics.
The concerto then turns inward for the relaxed central movement, “Soughing,” shifting to the more airborne, intimate voice of the soprano saxophone. Inspired by the sound of wind moving through trees or across water — something perceived only through what it touches — Mackey here gives McAllister long, leisurely, ruminative lines that float above an almost psychedelically gentle orchestral backdrop. This music of unforced epiphanies had a revelatory quality hinting at what Mackey had in mind by the saxophone’s ability to “transcend.”
A vamping transition gave McAllister time to switch back to alto sax for the finale, “Aeolian Howl,” which featured Mackey’s most exuberant rhythmic grooves, along with ecstatic bursts from the saxophone that called to mind a 21st-century version of Whitman’s “barbaric yawp.” My personal favorite sonority was McAllister’s popping, slap-tongue articulation to produce a dry, pizzicato-like snap that cut through the texture with mischievous precision.
Throughout, Mackey’s score is full of character-driven demands. Markings such as “with growing but repressed intensity,” “secretive,” and “singing” suggest the kind of stage directions you might expect in a play script. McAllister treated each with the same clarity and theatrical flair, shaping the finale’s surges of energy as if tracing a series of shifting dramatic personas.
Yet Mackey’s concerto is never solely about the solo instrument. It also gives him an opportunity to play the saxophone’s personality against the orchestra’s essentially infinite timbral possibilities. Anemology opens up a kaleidoscope of unusual timbres — highly differentiated woodwinds, bike bells mixed with harmonica, swirling flexatones — and deploys them with delight and surprise.
The composer likens the orchestra to “the landscape, topography, scenery” that the saxophone’s movement animates, and the concerto’s interplay depends as much on these inventive textures as on the solo line itself. Renes navigated this terrain with compelling precision, keeping the ensemble responsive and supple so that each unusual timbral combination registered clearly without overwhelming the soloist.
John Adams’s Harmonielehre, which filled the second half, offered its own vision of harmonic landscape and expressive terrain. Nine years older than Mackey, Adams also came of age during the golden age of rock, though he internalized those impressions in a very different way, channeling his eclectic influences into large-scale musical architecture in orchestral works that trace powerful psychological narratives. Harmonielehre, with its sweeping spans and expressive volatility, is a superb example of how Adams shapes that multiplicity into long arcs of tension and release.
Composed in 1985 for the San Francisco Symphony, Harmonielehre documents a moment when Adams was wrestling with the future of tonality and his place within it. The title — borrowed from Schoenberg’s early 20th-century treatise — became, for the composer, a way of naming a “psychic quest for harmony,” a personal statement of belief in tonal possibility at a time when the prevailing currents of new music still treated such belief with suspicion. Harmonielehre has long since secured its status as a contemporary classic — not simply because it is performed so often, but also because its drama of tension and release reveals more on each hearing: exactly what a “classic” should do.
Adams himself led the Seattle Symphony in Harmonielehre back in 2012, and Renes’ reading on this occasion added to that local history with its own distinct profile. An important European advocate of Adams (he will conduct a new production of The Death of Klinghoffer at the Maggio Musicale in Florence in April), Renes brought a combination of meticulous control and overwhelming power when the work demanded it, at moments almost frightening in its sheer physical impact. The opening hammer-blow E minor chords carried an awe-inspiring ferocity and weight. Yet just as striking was the transparency he elicited in the long expanse that follows, a stretch of music whose suspended yearning and uncertainty evoke an “alternate history” of European fin-de-siècle harmonic malaise.
The sheer logistical scale of the piece added to the impact. Adams’ score requires forces beyond the orchestra’s regular complement — extra keyboard, harp, tuba, and a notably expanded percussion battery — and the Seattle Symphony rose to the challenge with assurance. Principal percussionist Michael Werner, who had already made an impression in the timbral wizardry of the Mackey, was indispensable again here, while principal horn Mark Robbins brought a burnished tone to Harmonielehre’s swooning moments. Across the ensemble, the playing had a precision and collective alertness that enhanced the coloristic richness of Adams’ score.
In the central movement, “The Amfortas Wound,” principal trumpet David Gordon’s elegiac lines left a pang of emotion, all the more acute after my recent experience with San Francisco Opera’s moving new Parsifal production. Adams has written about the Jungian roots of this movement — the archetype of Amfortas as a figure of psychic wounding, a “sickness of the soul” marked by impotence and depression — and Renes tapped into the sense of suspended, unhealed time with palpable urgency. Hearing it now, the “wound” read as a metaphor for the aesthetic unease and uncertainty surrounding the expressive future of the orchestra itself in that late 20th-century moment.
Renes paced the gradual accumulation of energy in the finale, “Meister Eckhardt and Quackie,” with finesse, letting Adams’ radiant berceuse expand with tidal momentum. Renes brought clarity to the complex rhythmic layering; extremes of timbral space registered vividly — stratospheric strings and winds against seismic double basses and bass drum. Throughout, Renes managed the dynamic contours with precision, able to dial the volume up or down in exact increments so that even the most explosive moments retained their focus.
Adams taps into powerful emotions without ever tipping into sentimentality, and Renes’ performance underscored the disciplined and unsparing aspects of Harmonielehre. That restraint and refusal to sentimentalize even deeply felt material echoed the concert’s opening piece: Aaron Copland’s rarely heard Quiet City, whose loneliness is shaped with a similarly firm hand.
Written in 1939 as incidental music for Irwin Shaw’s play of the same name, commissioned by the Group Theatre, the piece’s scenario was later described by Copland as “a realistic fantasy concerning the night-thoughts of many different kinds of people in a great city,” calling for music evocative of “the nostalgia and inner distress of a society profoundly aware of its own insecurity.” After the play’s brief and unsuccessful preview run, Copland reworked some of its material, originally written for a small chamber ensemble, into an orchestral piece for English horn, trumpet, and strings.
English hornist Stefan Farkas and trumpeter David Gordon shaped the dialogue between the two solo instruments with quiet clarity. Farkas’ line conveyed the unsettled, introspective character associated with the work’s central figure, while Gordon answered with a more open, confident tone that suggested the memory of abandoned aspirations.
