At the New York Philharmonic premiere of David Lang’s the wealth of nations, from left: Music Director Designate Gustavo Dudamel, Concertmaster Frank Huang, David Lang, and Chorus Director Malcolm Merriweather. Photo by Chris Lee.
In Monday’s (3/23) Musical America, Fred Cohn writes, “In 2019, the New York Philharmonic presented the premiere of David Lang’s opera prisoner of the state, a Fidelio adaptation that used Beethoven’s scenario to comment on the persistence of political oppression into our own time. The composer/librettist takes a similar tack in his oratorio the wealth of nations, freely adapted from Adam Smith’s seminal economic treatise of 1776, clearly intended as a contemplation of the culture and politics of 21st-century America. The 70-minute, 18-movement work had its world premiere on March 19 at Geffen Hall. Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Philharmonic and its free-lance chorus, along with mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Aside from passages from Smith’s book, the work includes texts by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edith Wharton, the 19th-century writer and activist Maria W. Stewart, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass, Eugene V. Debs, and the composer himself, all of them offering perspectives on capitalism and its effect on the nation…. The score, written in Lang’s patented minimalism-adjacent musical language, is thoroughly accessible, turning the work’s ideas into sound… The soloists made the texts hit home, abetted by how the deft orchestral continuity supported and enhanced the vocal lines…. The crowd cheered.”
