Special and rare: Composer joins SBSO as guest soloist for piano concerto at Notre Dame

Call it coincidence or serendipity, but Alastair Willis heard about Adam Neiman’s Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra before anyone had heard the 2012 work — before, in fact, it was finished.

“We met a number of years ago at a chamber festival that he was just attending,” Neiman says by phone Monday. “(Later,) he was on a certain flight to London that I was on. I was working on this concerto on the plane and ended up telling him about it.”

A few years later, Willis guest-conducted the piece at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where the pianist is a full-time faculty member.

Now the two of them reunite to perform it again for the South Bend Symphony Orchestra’s first concerts of the 2021-22 season, on Sept. 25 and 26 at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.

But first, the concert begins with Jessie Montgomery’s “Starburst” and then concludes with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.

Willis, who begins his fifth season as the SBSO’s music director with these two concerts, says that coming after a hurried and delayed 2020-21 season with seven concerts between April and July, the excitement about starting a new season feels “palpable.”

“Our musicians are excited, our audiences can’t wait to hear us again, yet we are still in a pandemic,” he says by email from England. “After such a challenging 18 months, the power of live orchestra music means even more to me now, and I can’t wait for the return of live, in-person concerts.”

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‘Positive, pulsating energy’

Born in 1981 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Montgomery grew up in an artistic household, with her father a musician and her mother a theater artist and storyteller. Also a violinist, she currently is a member of the Catalyst Quartet and also performs with the Silkroad Ensemble and Sphinx Virtuosi.

The Sphinx Organization commissioned “Starburst” in 2012, and Montgomery has said the music is intended to illustrate the astronomical definition of a starburst — the rapid formation of a large number of new stars in a galaxy.

“For me,” Willis says, “‘Starburst’ has many musical layers of positive, pulsating energy, always driving forward. … I can shut my eyes and picture stars bursting with the energetic exploding melodies that she creates.”

The SBSO performed her “Strum” on the Juneteenth documentary that it made earlier this year and that aired on WNIT Public Television, and, Willis says, “Starburst” represents the first step toward fulfilling the orchestra’s new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion initiative to program more Black and other minority composers.

“With this we are uniting with our fellow musicians and orchestras worldwide, and I am very proud of that,” Willis says. “This season we have several pieces by African American composers, and it’s no coincidence that we are opening with music by Montgomery. We have always been committed to programming great music — Jessie is one of the top composers of our time, she has been commissioned and performed by orchestras around the world, and has composed some superb pieces, including ‘Starburst.’”

A cinematic concerto

Neiman’s piano concerto concludes the first half of the concert, and, Willis says, it’s special and rare to have the composer present as a work’s guest soloist.

“Our job is to realize the composer’s wishes,” he says, “and when conversing is possible, there can be a greater understanding and therefore a more convincing performance.”

Similarly, Willis says, an orchestra’s role is to support the soloist.

“I am inspired to be extra prepared when the soloist is also the composer,” he says. “Adam speaks with complete conviction as composer and soloist, which helps me and the musicians. By comparison, when a soloist wants a Beethoven phrase to go a certain way, that’s a different kind of discussion.”

Both Willis and Neiman compare his neo-Romantic concerto to the film scores Bernard Hermann wrote for seven of Alfred Hitchcock’s films in the 1950s and 1960s.

“It’s Romantic, the harmonies are lush, there’s so much lyricism, it’s very accessible,” Willis says about the concerto.

Vermont’s Manchester Music Festival, where Neiman has been the artistic director since 2017 and previously performed many times, commissioned the concerto and premiered it Oct. 5, 2013, with the Neiman as the pianist.

“I particularly like the combination of piano with strings,” he says. “It’s a very powerful combination. I think the strings complement the virtuosic power of the piano beautifully.”

The music, Neiman says, is tonal, lyrical and cinematic, and adds that he loves a lot the music written for films, particularly in the 1960s.

“I think some of the most evocative American music comes from the cinema,” he says. “Not to say that the piece tells a story, but if they are accustomed to hearing that style of music, they may like this.”

Born in 1978 in California, Neiman maintains an active, international performance schedule in addition to his teaching and composing, which now includes multiple chamber works, several solo piano pieces and, among his orchestral works, two symphonies. He’s also written a second piano concerto.

“In a way, I treat all music very much the same way in the creative process,” he says. “I didn’t compose it differently because it involved the piano, although as a pianist, I’m very comfortable performing it.”

That, Neiman says, “adds a level of pleasure” for him, but he follows the same process whether he’s writing chamber music or a symphony.

“I begin with a seed idea and the seed idea shapes the work in its flow and its effect,” he says. “But, certainly, there is an advantage in being a pianist in that this is my mother tongue, instrumentally speaking.”

Neiman has now performed the concerto enough times that he’s now able to get “out of the composer mentalist and just (be) the performer,” and he now treats it as he does any of the concertos in his expansive repertoire.  

The opening, he says, provided the “seed” that inspired the rest of the composition.

“I got the idea for the very opening of the piece, which is strings by themselves that are triads — basically, chords,” Neiman says. “I heard that first. Then I understood how the piano could complement that and comment on it. All of the motifs that come later come from that.”

That “helps the composition cohere because all of the parts are related, but I’m able to present them in ways that seem contrasting at certain times.”

‘A wonderful ending’

The concert then concludes with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade, which he wrote in 1880.

“The Serenade is a wonderful ending to any concert!” Willis says. “It’s structured as a large-scale four-movement symphony for strings, full of Tchaikovsky’s unique mixture of melancholy and exhilaration. Tchaikovsky is known for his melodies, and there are many in this piece.”

The second movement, in particular, caught the public’s attention immediately, with the premiere audience, Willis says, demanding it be played a second time.

Tchaikovsky’s former composition teacher, Anton Rubinstein, called it the composer’s best piece, Willis says. The conductor has his own personal reasons for loving it.

“Tchaikovsky’s Serenade is one of my all-time favorite pieces, thanks to George Balanchine’s choreography of it,” Willis says about the entire work. “I was fortunate to conduct several performances of it with the Pacific Northwest Ballet when I was living in Seattle. The music itself is so balletic, and Balanchine’s chorography perfectly captures its essence. I now can’t hear the music without ‘seeing’ the dancers onstage.”

In concert

• Who: The South Bend Symphony Orchestra with guest soloist Adam Neiman

• Where: The University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

• When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25 and 2:30 p.m. Sept. 26

• Cost: $25-$19

• For more information: Call 574-631-2800 or visit performingarts.nd.edu

COVID-19 notes

Patrons are strongly encouraged to be vaccinated. Regardless of vaccination status, all visitors are required to wear a mask while inside of the venue. Food and drink are not allowed.