Adagio, 'Beziehungsweisen' for orchestra

Adagio, interplay of relationships for orchestra, was written in 2013 to commission from the “Migros Cultural Percentage: Classics” for the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and its chief conductor Kent Nagano, to whom the work is also dedicated. Nagano and his Orchestra gave the world première of the work on 4/5 March 2014 in Montreal.

Adagio, interplay of relationships for orchestra, was conceived as an atmospheric “bridge” for a concert programme that otherwise featured works by Wagner (the Prelude to Parsifal), Liszt (his 2nd Piano Concerto) and Berlioz (the Symphonie fantastique). The topic of loneliness, of being torn between two worlds, is something that links all these three works and can also to be regarded as the principal topic of my own composition. Several quotations from these three works and quotations from my own oeuvre have flowed into the structure of the Adagio and are thus barely perceptible by the ear alone. And yet the result is an interplay of relationships that is constantly present in the background. The “leitmotive” technique that was employed in different ways by Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz, and which I have also utilized in the present Adagio (for the first-ever time) can be found in my work in the manner in which I treat harmony. Although the Adagio refers to the three abovementioned works in its structure, it may also be performed quite independently of the context of Wagner/Liszt/Berlioz.

David Philip Hefti