Saturday, October 18, 2025
8:00 PM
In the first of a season of collaborations with the Boston Symphony, Augustin Hadelich is the soloist in one of the most dynamic and fascinating concertos of our time. Afterwards, Andris Nelsons conducts Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, a meditation on fate and a richly melodic cornerstone of the symphonic repertoire.
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Augustin Hadelich, violin
John ADAMS Violin Concerto
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5
Learn more about the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 2025-2026 season on their site.
In a conversation with CRB's Brian McCreath, Augustin Hadelich describes the challenges of music by John Adams, as well as the rewards of the composer's Violin Concerto, and he looks ahead to the other concerto he'll perform with the BSO this season, Thomas Adès's Concentric Paths.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreith at Symphony Hall with Augustin Hadelich, back with the Boston Symphony in a really special capacity for this season. Augustin, thanks for a little of your time today. I appreciate it.
Augustin Hadelich Hi, it's great to see you again.
Brian McCreath And we'll get back to that special capacity as Artist in Residence in a minute, but first I wanna talk about John Adams. And I want to actually return to a quote from you. My colleague, Kendall Todd, interviewed you for your album, American Road Trip, and you said something along the lines of, when you come to John Adams, it looks really hard initially, but once you get past it, it becomes this real sense of joy, and that you can kind of get into a groove with the rhythm, especially in John Adams's music. Is that the case with the Violin Concerto?
Augustin Hadelich Yes, particularly in the last movement, it's maybe a little bit similar to the last movement of Road Movies, that's on that album. I find it very exhilarating to play, and yes, when you first learn it, you're just so worried about miscounting and some of the rhythms, getting the rhythms right, but once you work through that, in the end, the rhythms actually feel very natural. So they don't feel like rhythms you have to force yourself to do that are really somehow strange or counterintuitive. It's just that when these rhythms are written down on the page as music notes, they look harder than they actually end up being when you hear them.
When I have free time, I often like to hear no music because it's nice to sometimes also enjoy silence. But sometimes I do put on different pieces by John Adams. And I love how it just, I feel like I'm sort of, you just sort of float on one groove and then eventually it sort of like falls into another one, you know, and from there into another one. And he has this incredible sense for building up rhythmic patterns slowly and then suddenly there's something else. And at the same time, always sort of referencing in this kind of movement, like the last movement, I don't know, something fiddly, something folk music-like, except that it's incredibly complicated somehow. And then the better I know the piece, the more fun it is. So I had this experience with Road Movies, that the first time I played it, I was scared to death. And then by the time I played it for the tenth time, I was just looking forward to it all night. And then it didn't feel like, well, it's just a piece you can't switch your mind off. You have to like be incredibly present at all times and can't look away. You have to be right there, incredibly alert, but I also just found it so exciting. So it ended up often being the piece I looked forward to the most on the program.
And I've really been looking forward to this week. I actually learned the Violin Concerto pretty recently, although when I was a student, so 20 years ago, I got the music to this piece and I kind of started working on it a little bit. And so maybe there are somewhere in my brain, already, memories of how to play it. But it never got to the point of performing it with the orchestra. And at the time I was not playing so much American music yet. I've gotten more and more familiar also with John Adams and his other music and heard a lot of his other pieces. And so then by the time that I now learned this properly and prepared it for a concert, I sort of knew what he probably meant and wanted. And then I had the incredible experience of playing this with him conducting also a couple of months ago, which I mean, it's such a dream to play with a composer and be able to ask the questions that you have for a piece. Or sometimes you sort of hesitate to ask because, what if he thinks that's a dumb question, like we don't normally have that with other music because the composers are long dead. And we can't ask Beethoven so everyone's endlessly arguing about what he meant. And so with John Adams we can just ask and sometimes it turns out they're not like slaves to what's on the page. The composer wrote it down this way. But sometimes what he meant is like a little different. So like, he's like, well, that dynamic, forget that. You know, make, change that to this, change it to that. We don't dare to do that with Beethoven or Brahms although they probably would have if, you know, performance depending on how it's going. So yeah, I really enjoyed playing it with him and now playing it here. It's always very special to play with the BSO. It's very different also from the last few pieces I've played with them. And I think that's also fun. I love variety, stylistic variety, so when I switch from one piece to another. Last week I actually was performing the Dvořák Concerto in Chicago, which is a great piece, but it couldn't be more different from John Adams somehow. I find that really refreshing to now play this piece. And yeah, you caught me in a great mood right after rehearsal.
Brian McCreath [Laughs] Well lucky me, but yeah, the last thing you played with the BSO was the Tchaikovsky at Tanglewood. And you've done also recently the Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto with the BSO and Benjamin Britten before that. But anyway, back to John Adams. I'm curious about your choice for this concert, as it is the beginning of your year as Artist in Residence. And I wonder if the choice of this piece was part of the package, that you wanted to do this piece specifically because you're now embarking on many projects over the course of this season with the BSO.
Augustin Hadelich What happened was that, you find the weeks in the schedule first and then sometimes that sort of results in the repertoire already. And so for my second week with the orchestra in February, that will be with Thomas Adès conducting. And right away I said, you know, I've never played his concerto with him conducting. And so that sort came together like that. And in the case of the Adams, the idea was that there is a bit of a focus, maybe an American focus in the season because of America's birthday coming up next year, so I think from the part of the orchestra there was a wish to have this piece programmed at some point. So I think they suggested, what about the Adams concerto? And then I thought about it and I was like, well, I've kind of been looking for a chance to play that more. And so it didn't take a lot of convincing to say yes to that.
I think a residency can be a chance to maybe show up with a bunch of repertoire that's not the most popular, the most played. So, you know, I've played Tchaikovsky at Tanglewood or something like that, but now to play Adams and Adès concertos and to kind of show some other sides of me that the audience here hasn't maybe seen before. To also get to know the musicians with totally different repertoire and in different settings. I'll also play some chamber music in February. And I think I was quite happy to pick some pieces that are not the sort of the core repertoire, the romantic core repertoire.
But I have to say though, that the Adès concerto is, of the contemporary pieces in my repertoire, maybe the one that I've played the most, or perhaps, at least I'm always looking for chances to play. I believe it's like really one of the greatest contemporary pieces. Very different from Adams. They're both great pieces. It's like apples and oranges. I couldn't compare them. Also the violin writing is very, very different because I feel like John Adams is trying to, on some level, maybe pay homage also to, kind of, fiddling and stuff that's very idiomatic on the violin. Whereas, when Thomas Adès writes for the violin, maybe it's the same for many instruments, it's sort of almost like an alien creature that he's imagining, like some totally different instrument that you're sounding like. Like when he writes for voice and it's in these incredibly high parts, you know he has these in his opera. So he's then writing things that are barely possible, or you look at the page and it is like, well I guess theoretically that's possible, but how on earth am I going to do that? That was a moment when I first saw the score where I was like, this looks impossible. Of course we should always be really careful never to say anything is unplayable because then you look like an idiot hundreds of years later. People make fun of you, you know? So it turns out actually that then very quickly when you really try to do it, when you really have to do it, and you have to make it work, then you do find solutions and you're like, actually it wasn't as hard as it seemed, it's just something you've never had to do before. So in Thomas Adès sometimes he has passages that are so high, where you stay up that high. You don't just reach a high note, but you have to get your whole hand so high up the fingerboard that you no longer have a hold with your thumb so you don't have a reference point. So it feels like somebody who's climbing a mountain without any ropes, you know, like just completely, you have the feeling you could slip off and not know where you are. And this was a very scary feeling the first time I performed that. Then you get more used to it. I mean, I guess cellists have to do that when they play in high positions. They don't have a reference point. So it's possible, but it's just so far outside the comfort zone of what we're used to in other repertoire. And that's cool that when composers sort of push violin technique further than it has gone before, but it does make the sort of, let's say, barrier to entry for that piece extremely high. It's like, if you learn the Adès concerto, it is a huge commitment. It will take just like many, many, many, months of suffering until you are comfortable with that but I think you're rewarded with maybe one of the most special and deep and emotional pieces especially this the second movement of it. I think it's a very, very special piece, and so whenever I play it I've always for one or two weeks afterwards I can't get it out of my head it just keeps staying in there.
Brian McCreath But it sounds like the Adams, then, is not quite in that category. That it's a little bit more idiomatic for the violin. You reference fiddling, and I know that you've been really taken with bluegrass in recent years. You love doing these bluegrass referenced kinds of things. But is the Adams a little less like that in terms of pushing you into areas you maybe haven't gone before?
Augustin Hadelich There are certainly moments in the Adams Concerto that are very challenging. And I would say it's challenging in the sense that it's this rollercoaster ride. I'm thinking of the last movement, like a rollercoaster ride where if you fall off, you feel like you can't get back on. It's very sort of high octane, the feeling of the music. So definitely there are many things that are difficult about it, but he doesn't ask for something that's, you now, unplayable, or where you feel like this is crazy, what there was asked for. And I don't know, Adès doesn't think what he's asking for is crazy. And once you've learned it, it's not crazy anymore. But it was crazy, some of the things in that piece. So in that sense, yeah, that is kind of a difference. I think John Adams is actually quite practical in what he is asking for. Probably also the people he wrote it for, first I think it was Jorja Fleezanis in Minnesota, and then also Gidon Kremer played it right away and probably also worked with him. And he probably also worked with them on some of the passage works. So some of it lies quite well. But certainly there are, it's not an easy piece, there are many hard things about it. And musically I feel like what's hard about the Adams is that in the first and second movements, because it's rhythmically complex sometimes, that it can start to sound like you're mainly focused on counting. And that's not something you ever want in this piece, that in first movement, also in the second, I think, there should be a sense that you sort of float through the piece. And it just so happens to kind of be in this endless groove, but it shouldn't feel like you really trying to count and subdivide. And so that's something that's a challenge. It's not really the technical challenge on the violin. It's more something for your mind and musical imagination that you're able to have a very, very steady rhythm, but at the same time, sort of feel yourself letting go. Not the last movement. The last movement is very groovy and should sound that way, and counting, using off all fingers and [laughs] It's very, yeah, it's really exciting.
Brian McCreath I love what you just said a few minutes ago, "high octane." I have to use that on the radio. That's a really great description. Augustin, it's great to have you here. I'm so glad you're going to be here so much during this season. And what a piece to start this residency with. Man, this John Adams concerto is a dynamite. So thanks a lot for your time today, I appreciate it.
Augustin Hadelich Thank you so much. Thank you.