John Adams might have more marquee power, Philip Glass more crossover appeal and Osvaldo Golijov more multicultural allure, but John Harbison has been a well-regarded force in classical music since he won a BMI Foundation Student Composer Award in 1954 at age 16.
One of his highest-profile accomplishments came in 1999, when the Metropolitan Opera presented the world premiere of the composer’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s celebrated novel, “The Great Gatsby” — Harbison’s third opera.
Nine years later, the Aspen Music Festival is presenting the debut of its commission of a 25-minute suite from that opera as the centerpiece of the opening weekend of its 2008 season, which is devoted to the theme of storytelling.
As part of a program that includes the festival debut of Richard Goode as soloist for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, conductor David Zinman and the Aspen Festival Orchestra will perform the new work at 4 p.m. Sunday in the Benedict Music Tent.
“It’s a piece that orchestras would really like to play, and it’s a lot of fun for the audience and a lot of fun for the players themselves,” said Zinman, the festival’s music director. “It’s good. I’m glad I commissioned it.”
Harbison, 69, a composer-in-residence at the festival in 1998-2002, was drawn to “The Great Gatsby” because of the musical possibilities he saw in it. He acknowledged that taking on one of American literature’s most iconic novels was a risky challenge, but he was not daunted.
“I’m sure there were many problems about this that I didn’t see,” he said from his home in Cambridge, Mass., “but what I did see was a lot of musical opportunities, such that it was one of the few pieces I’ve ever had on my desk that there was not a single moment where I was consciously experiencing any difficulty.”
For Harbison, the key to the success of any opera is more the quality of the music than the strength of the drama. He noted that many works, such as Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” would have been forgotten a long time ago if their questionable librettos were the main determining factor.
“For me, it’s all about the musical values,” he said. “I’m someone, who if nothing much is happening onstage, like in (Wagner’s) ‘Parsifal,’ it never bothered me for an instant. I don’t think that’s the present way of thinking about opera, but I’m content to be really out of step on that.”
The idea of fashioning a suite from the opera struck Zinman when Harbison asked him to lead readings of a few scenes with student singers at Aspen as the composer was making last-minute revisions to the work before its debut.
The conductor has regularly performed the composer’s music. During his tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony, the orchestra played several of Harbison’s major works and commissioned his Symphony No. 3, which debuted in February 1991.
“The only conversations I’ve had about this suite going back about 10 years were always with David Zinman whenever I would see him, and my conviction was that I didn’t want to do it,” Harbison said.
He was reluctant to face the complications of developing an integrated structure for the piece and figuring out a way to re-create the sound of the opera’s vintage stage band using mostly the traditional instrumentation of a symphony orchestra.
But when Zinman guest-conducted Harbison’s “Canonical American Songs” with the Boston Symphony in January 2007, the two again conversed about a possible suite based primarily on the foxtrot and other dance sections. The conductor outlined a possible organization for the work, even singing sections to illustrate his points.
“It sounded great,” Harbison said. “It sounded like it would be easy to do, so at that point, I was very enthusiastic, because I thought he’d just basically told me how to do it, and I’d just go home and do it.”
The composer agreed to the project, a commission from the Aspen Music Festival. The resulting piece, titled “Great Gatsy Orchestral Suite,” didn’t work out to be as easy as he surmised. But he persevered, ultimately creating a piece with a sense of continuity, not just a series of excerpts, that was different from what Zinman had envisioned.
“Anyway, I’m glad I did it,” the composer said. “It was a nice way to look back and look through the opera and evaluate it again.”
The score was finished four or five months ago, with Harbison making adjustments to the end. He has been in Aspen assisting with rehearsals and will be present at the premiere.
It might seem only natural that the suite’s unveiling would whet Harbison’s appetite for another production of the opera. But no such presentation is on the horizon, and he professes to be unconcerned.
“I absolutely don’t think about that,” he said. “There are things that are healthy to think about and things that are not, and it’s high on my list of things not to think about.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Great Gatsby Orchestral Suite”
Classical music. Benedict Music Tent, Aspen Music Festival grounds. Conductor David Zinman and the Aspen Festival Orchestra present the world premiere of a suite from John Harbison’s 1999 opera during the opening weekend of the Aspen Music Festival.4 p.m. Sunday.$72. 970-925-9042 or .
