Must the Devil have All the Good Tunes?

John Adams invokes the dark, throbbing intensity of Liszt’s Totentanz (1849) in the opening moment of this 2018 piano concerto written for Yuja Wang, but he injects a slowed-down voicing of the sinister riff from Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme (1959), grabbing the listener by the neck. As the title suggests, Adams salutes the heady tradition of sacred music swiping ideas and motifs from the secular world—the title is a Martin Luther quote—and using the classic fast-slow-fast form through three continuous movements, he explores a kind of battle between the sacred and the profane. The instrumentation calls for a honky-tonk piano and electric bass, a sonic evocation of the devil’s music set against a traditional orchestra that presents a tug-of-war both musically and conceptually. The blur of manic energy at the start is followed by the measured, occasionally serene, yet equally fraught second movement before the piece dives into its frenzied conclusion, where a devilish intensity suggests victory for the forces of pleasure.