Richard Tognetti and the ACO go searching for the ‘American sound’

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Richard Tognetti and the ACO go searching for the ‘American sound’

By Nick Galvin

In 2019, American composer Sam Adams texted his friend and Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) musical director Richard Tognetti to say he had completed a new work for electric violin and orchestra that he’d been commissioned to write for the ACO.

Then COVID hit and, like many of us, Adams was forced into a period of isolation and self-examination, much of it spent walking in the Nevada desert. Out of that period came the conviction that he had to start over, stripping the piece back in a search for greater authenticity.

Composer Sam Adams with his friend and collaborator Richard Tognetti.

Composer Sam Adams with his friend and collaborator Richard Tognetti. Credit: Nick Moir

“It was, I think, a little bit too preoccupied with a kind of self-involved exploration of sound and less about communicating directly,” says Adams, 36, during a flying visit to Sydney to attend the world premiere of the work, Echo Transcriptions.

“And I think my priorities as a musician and as a composer have changed quite a bit over the course of the pandemic and during that intensely reflective year and a half of living out in Nevada. The piece changed quite a bit. I think it is a simpler piece.”

Since graduating from Stanford University, Adams, son of legendary US composer John Adams, has built a worldwide reputation for contemporary classical composition, particularly electronic music. In 2018, the ACO premiered another commission from him, Movements (For Us and Them).

One of the challenges of writing for electronic instrumentation is the almost endless sonic palette at the disposal of the composer. Adams says he has learnt less is more.

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“I am drawn to music that has a certain kind of restraint,” he says. “That is why I love Mozart and Monteverdi and Stravinsky. This is something that very much applies to my own compositional practice. If I am able to limit myself, whether that be through sounds or through the kind of conceptual framework of a piece, that’s where the good stuff comes from.”

Tognetti has been experimenting with the electric violin for some years, regularly returning his $10 million del Gesu to its case in favour of one of his futuristic-looking amplified instruments. Tognetti says the plugged-in instrument – in this instance, a six-string version – requires a totally different approach.

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“I’ve been trying to get sounds out that you can’t access with the acoustic violin,” he says. “Having said that there’s a sweetness and reverb-ness that you can get from an electric violin you can’t get from the acoustic violin. I think I’ve finally got a sound that I feel pretty good with.”

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Echo Transcriptions is part of a program Tognetti has put together which he has called The American. It also features work from Florence Price, George Walker, Samuel’s father, John, and composer and member of The National, Bryce Dessner. The closing work in the program is Dvorak’s String Quartet no 12, written while the Czech composer was on vacation in Spillville, Iowa, in 1893 and nicknamed American.

Tognetti has thought a lot about what the “American sound” might be.

“When you hear Dvorak from Spillville, he captured that didn’t he?” he says. “Where the hell does that come from?”

He believes there is also “something American in tonality” about Adams’ new piece.

“The American tradition of improvised music has certainly made its way into the sound of my music and also into the way I write and come up with ideas,” agrees Adams. “I don’t know if that’s what could be considered American about my music. It also comes down to the music that I love and that I grew up listening to. I think you can hear a lot of that in this piece.”

Richard Togenetti will be performing Echo Transcriptions in The American, touring nationally from 11-23 November, in Sydney from 12-16 November.

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