Once upon a time, it seemed like a natural fit for composer Philip Glass to have his latest symphony premiered at the Kennedy Center, during the country's 250th anniversary year. The work honors Abraham Lincoln; Glass is a revered American composer who was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2015.
But things didn't go quite that way. Instead, the piece had its world debut Sunday with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Abraham Lincoln has appeared as a character in several of Philip Glass' works already, including the stage work The Civil Wars and in the opera Appomattox. An animatronic Lincoln — not unlike the one in the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World — even appears in Glass' opera The Perfect American, about Walt Disney; Disney has a duet with the machine version of Lincoln.
This time around, Glass wanted to focus entirely on Lincoln, using Lincoln's own words.
The work was set to premiere with the National Symphony Orchestra last month. But lately, nothing has been routine at the Kennedy Center, where until recently President Trump's name appeared on the building, and where Trump has been chairman since early 2025. Glass felt the arts complex had been politicized. In January, he withdrew the work, writing on social media: "Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership."
So instead, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed it at Tanglewood, its summer home in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, pairing it with a suite of John Williams' music for the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, as well as a performance of Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" narrated by actor Alec Baldwin.
Glass, who is now 89 years old, has declined interviews. Conductor Karen Kamensek, who led the performance, has known Glass for some 30 years, and has a long history of conducting his music. She says she appreciates how much Glass made room for Lincoln to speak for himself — and how farsighted Lincoln's comments were.
"There are melodies," she said, "but it's more about getting the text across. He's selected parts of speeches of Lincoln's own words, which are very, very contemporary to everything right now, and also visionary and kind of an omen … he envisioned that our country would probably have troubles in its future."
In his program note to this symphony, Glass wrote: "Lincoln's legacy of holding the country together in a period during which it was ripping itself apart — seemed an appropriate subject to consider on this, our country's 250th birthday."
Baritone Zachary James portrays Lincoln in the premiere. The singer and actor says that there are special challenges in this role, which incorporates both sung and spoken parts. " To speak the words of Lincoln without thinking about the pressure of singing, which is just a totally different animal, was really a special experience," he said. "I was able to allow myself to be emotional in a way that you can't when you're singing, because you can't cry and sing at the same time."
He, too, appreciated Lincoln's plainspokenness — and his willingness to emotionally open in his public expressions. "I just thought, 'Yes, this is it,'" James said. "This is who he was. And he was incredibly open and vulnerable and speaking in a way that men did not speak in that time. And that is why he was great. He didn't have a speechwriter. This was who he was."
Conductor Karen Kamensek said the eight-movement piece ends unusually — instead of in big, splashy or exuberant exclamations, it comes to a close in long, rather quiet, sustained chords.
Kamensek said that it took her some time to puzzle out what they meant to her, and what she wanted the BSO's musicians to communicate through them. "I heard it as four columns of sound. And I said, 'These are the columns that our society is built on. Basically, we have pillars of morals and values that people are free to … interpret how they will.'"
In rehearsal the day before the premiere, she told the musicians: "Focus the sound towards each other. And give the public these columns so that their minds can be clear, to take from it what they will."
It's a resonant message at any time of year — but feels especially so around this Independence Day.
Audio recording of the concert courtesy of the BSO and GBH Music.
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