David Lang

And I was really happy that that worked out really well.

The solo things, like I didn't know if having Fleur singing these arias with no accompaniment, if they would be so emotional.

But in my heart, what I hoped would happen would be that all those changes of scale would end up kind of focusing what happened to our attention as we listen.

But you should tell me what you thought.

I mean, I've been living with this piece for years.

You just heard it the first time, so I'd be very curious to know what you thought.

What's weird, you know, being a young composer, you try to learn things and figure things out and you're always aware of what you're trying that you've never done before.

When you become an old composer, and I can say that as a senior citizen, you're

you know things instinctively that you're not really paying attention to any longer.

So these issues of pacing and depth, there are all sorts of really important things that I don't think about as intensely as I used to think about them.

I just trust that I will know how they work.

And so for me, one of the really fun things was thinking that I was going to have

an experience that had a particular shape, like this giant enthusiastic Adam Smith stuff with a full orchestra at the beginning, and that gradually as the piece went on, it would taper down to these more personal American thoughts.

And we would get someplace that would be, as you said, optimistic, but also kind of really trying to pay attention to what's going on around us.

and I wasn't really sure that that was going to work.

But for me, that's the thing that I was really satisfied with, the shape of the intellectual argument I was really happy with.

I love that you say that because...

I really think that that's what you heard during the rehearsal, was you heard what's good in people.

Everyone has their individual part.

One of the things you do as a composer is you're actually writing a series of instructions for a hundred different people in this piece.