Thomas May's Blog

I’d meant to post a link to my program note for John Adams’s brand-new orchestral piece, The Rock You Stand On, written for Marin Alsop, who recently led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the world premiere:

Listening to John Adams often feels like stepping into a drama already in motion …

continue

The legendary cellist was born on 7 October 1955. The Strad takes a look at some moments of the cellist’s unparalleled career over the decades…

continue

To celebrate the 90th birthday of German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann, the JACK Quartet perform his three string quartets in a single evening at Columbia’s Miller Theatre – and reflect on their long association with his radical sound world. My interview with the ensemble for The Strad:

continue

Here’s my profile of violist Emma Wernig, Musical America’s New Artist of the Month for October:

In many chamber settings, the viola tends to blend into the texture—which made Emma Wernig’s playing all the more striking when I first encountered her last August on opening weekend at Tippet Rise. “Chamber music is my window into everything,” she says. “It’s the foundation of my solo work, my orchestral playing, everything…”

continue

I wrote this profile of Víkingur Ólafsson for Cal Performances, which is featuring the pianist as Artist in Residence for the 2025–26 season:

“You should always try to escape your own success,” Víkingur Ólafsson says. “Because that success so easily turns against you and limits you and your choices and what you want to do next” …

continue

To open the season this weekend, Franz Welser-Möst leads the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in the American premiere of Austrian composer Bernd Richard Deutsch’s ambitious, nearly-hour-long Urworte, which sets Goethe’s famous stanzas to music.

Movements:

Sunday’s concert will be livestreamed on Adella, digital home of The Cleveland Orchestra.

My introduction to the work can be found in the Cleveland Orchestra program notes here.

Composers often set aside ideas that strike them in a flash of inspiration, waiting until the right moment arrives to wrestle them down in detail and give them an enduring form. For Bernd Richard Deutsch, one such idea was to write a work exploring the elemental forces that shape our lives….
continue

Some thoughts on the splendid new release from Les Arts Florissants:

What a delight to come upon Les Arts Florissants’s latest recording, Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice. As coincidence would have it, I’d just experienced their performance of another Orpheus story on stage at the Lucerne Festival this summer: Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, led by the ensemble’s founder, William Christie. Charpentier’s exquisite tragédie en musique breaks off mid-story, with Orpheus still in the Underworld and Eurydice’s fate unresolved. In its fragmentary state, Charpentier’s 1686 opera captures the stark tragedy of the myth: a descent without resolution.

continue

I reviewed opening night with Christian Tetzlaff and Leif Ove Andsnes at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal for The Strad:

In his famously mischievous binary, Ned Rorem asserted that ‘the entire solar system is torn between two aesthetics: French and German’ – with the kicker: ‘If you agree with all this, you’re French. If you disagree, you’re German’. …
continue

Big and exciting from the Ojai Festival:

Ojai, CA – September 10, 2025) – Ojai Music Festival Board Chairman Jerry Eberhardt announced today the appointment of conductor/composer/pianist Teddy Abrams as Ojai’s next Artistic and Executive Director effective September 1, 2026, with his first Festival being the 81st Festival in June 2027. He will join the ranks of such distinguished predecessors as Ara Guzelimian, who concludes his tenure with the 2026 Festival, Thomas W. Morris, Ernest Fleischmann, and Lawrence Morton. Mr. Abrams’ collaboration with the Ojai Music Festival will be concurrent with his post as Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra….

As Arvo Pärt turns 90, British cellist Matthew Barley speaks about creating ’Touching Eternity’, a candlelit program that weaves Bach, Pärt and Tavener into a shared ritual of sound and silence.

continue