The Washington Post
By Anne Midgette
Context, they say, is everything. I hadn’t thought I cared for John Adams’s “The Gospel According to the Other Mary” (2012), a sprawling retelling of the last days of Christ from the points of view of Mary Magdalene and her siblings, Martha and Lazarus. But I found myself won over by the National Symphony Orchestra’s performance of the work, under Gianandrea Noseda, and in the presence of the composer on Thursday night.
It’s not that the piece isn’t problematic. Peter Sellars, the director, polymath and provocateur, has developed a technique of stitching together his libretti for Adams works from a pastiche of existing texts — in this case, excerpts from works by writers from the Jamaican author June Jordan to novelist Louise Erdrich, interwoven with the Bible. The result is an oblique collage of words that evoke moods and meanings, but leave it to the composer to determine the narrative. But Adams, adept and powerful a composer as he is, often follows Sellars’s lead and writes similarly evocative, slightly oblique music — creating works that are dramatically static.
Yet this piece worked for me Thursday as it hadn’t on recordings, and I was shocked when the music ended to see that more than 2½ hours had passed (partly because of a late start and a long intermission).
The biggest reason for this was Noseda, who, in the absence of a clear narrative, took hold and found one himself. It was an impressive, dramatic and passionate performance from the new music director of the NSO, who deserves a lot of respect: To agree to undertake an unfamiliar piece in a repertoire you’re not associated with as one of the biggest projects of your maiden season shows a striking open-mindedness, and he clearly approached the work with sincerity and feeling, and made something of it. Zinging silences between episodes, the spongy arpeggiations of the strings and the big, dark pounding chords of the low brass and low winds all were imbued with a drama that was at best inherent in the score.
It was also nice to see the orchestra devoting a whole evening to a significant contemporary work. This “Gospel” engages with the present, placing the Bible alongside accounts of Cesar Chavez, modern prisons, drug addiction and poverty and social ills — an approach that’s a Peter Sellars hallmark. It was exhilarating to see the orchestra embrace another part of its past — the commitment to big new American works that it used to have under Leonard Slatkin. The house wasn’t very full Thursday, and nobody would claim that contemporary works are always big box office, but it gave those who were there a different kind of brain fodder than the usual program, and helped the NSO be a more active part of the national conversation. (Indeed, medici.tv is going to broadcast Saturday’s performance live.)