MUSIC
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2019
8:00 PM

John Adams: Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?
Los Angeles Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$65-$105
http://www.lincolncenter.org/great-performers/show/los-angeles-philharmonic-6

A new piano concerto by John Adams (written only after he'd found the great title, an apocryphal quotation attributed to Martin Luther or one of the Wesleysor maybe the founder of the Salvation Army). It's sort of an Americana version of Liszt's Totentanz, with a honky-tonk tack piano and all. The soloist is Yuja Wang, one of the few young piano virtuosos who's also a musician. As icing on the cake, the remainder of the program consists of music that in different ways plays right to conductor Gustavo Dudamel's strengths: Ginastera's rarely heard highly Argentine-inflected Variaciones Concertantes (I love me some Ginastera!), and Stravinsky's very frequently heard The Rite of Spring, whose savage intensity should be fully conveyed by this conductor.

MAKE A NOTE OF IT: I keep plugging Boulud Sud because I genuinely believe this slick pan-Mediterranean spot is generally underappreciated (and Etiénne the somm!).