Netherlands Wind Ensemble brings big-city hustle and bustle to Adams’ music

A street cleaner sweeps the floor on the dimly lit stage. Then, to the music of Bach, the musicians trickle in – before a pumping rhythm brings everything to life. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble present their version of ‘Fearful Symmetries’ by John Adams as a day in the big city. Together, the racing music and visual overload make for a fittingly feverish atmosphere. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble knows all about creating a lively buzz, and this time they’ve brought along four collectives from the worlds of dance and theatre to shake things up. Artistic director Bart Schneemann has been wanting to perform Adams’s music for a long while now – he sees this American composer’s hip, eclectic, intense music as a perfect fit for his ensemble.

The only obstacle was finding a piece with the right instrumentation. Now Schneemann’s son Julian has fluently reworked ‘Fearful Symmetries’ for wind instruments only. His strings-free version of this late-1980s orchestral work with its signature ‘big-band-meets-symphonic’ sound, is even more wild and compelling than the original. The musicians take the audience on a by turns blistering and sweetly melodious journey, and the unrelenting beat means there’s little chance of escape. The symmetry of the title lies in the repeated patterns and fixed structures. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble add an extra dimension by playing the piece twice in a row, in mirrored formation. But on the surface, it is the dynamism and variation that stand out. Adams himself described the piece as ‘travel music’, as a continuous movement against the background of a shifting urban landscape – and the Netherlands Wind Ensemble has taken that description literally.

Those wizards from Hotel Modern theatre company have built a maquette-sized city on the stage, and with the help of a camera and projection screen they take the audience on a virtual journey into it. Adams’s eclectic music is echoed in the anachronisms (an 18th-century figurine playing pinball, anyone?) and stylistic clashes, while piles of garbage and the ruins of war set an uneasy undertone. Meanwhile, three couples from as many dance companies – Duda Paiva Company, ISH Dance Company and Mor Shani – use a combination of street dance and modern dance to zoom in on city life with all its miscommunications and people living alongside one another. In the beautiful closing scene, night falls over the city and peace returns.