"As a composer, your job is to make problems for other people to solve"

—David Lang to LA Weekly

David Lang's the loser to be released on Cantaloupe

Music February 7

To download the loser, click here.

(Password: CANTA2020)
Bang On a Can co-founder David Lang's acclaimed work the loser will be released on
Cantaloupe Music on February 7. The piece adapts Thomas Bernhard’s novel The Loser as an
opera in one act for solo baritone, solo pianist, and a small complement of musicians.
Composed, written, and directed by Lang, the loser premiered in 2016 at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music Next Wave Festival. LA Opera gave the piece its West Coast premiere in
2019, in what The Los Angeles Times described as “a mesmerizingly virtuosic performance by
Rod Gilfry, destined for the annals of opera.” Recorded in LA and New York, the
loser features performances from Gilfry, pianist Conrad Tao, and the Bang On a Can Opera
Ensemble, conducted by Lesley Leighton.

the loser is the story of a sensitive, sophisticated man who dreams of becoming a concert
pianist until he and his friend attend the same master class as a young Glenn Gould. As their
lives diverge from Gould’s, revealing the distance that separates them from real musical
expression, both of their dreams are crushed. Lang first read Bernhard's novel in 1998, when
a friend recommended it to him. Describing the experience of reading The Loser, Lang
recalled, "I was immediately hooked by the power of the novel, especially the psycho energy
of the narrator. With no paragraphs, and with almost every other sentence changing focus
and time and perspective and subject, it really felt like a rant to me—a passionate, smart, rich,
unhappy man ranting about his life. I couldn't read it silently. I ended up yelling the entire
book to my reflection in the mirror in my bathroom, from start to finish, which was very
exciting. And that day I started imagining what it would be like to add music to it."

the loser is Lang’s third full-length opera recording with Cantaloupe Music. This past October,
the label released Lang’s anatomy theater. With a libretto written by visual artist Mark Dion
and inspired by medical texts from the 18th and 19th centuries, anatomy theater takes as its
subject the public dissection of convicted murderer Sarah Osborne—a common practice in
an era when it was believed that the anatomy of criminals was marked by spiritual corruption,
physically different than that of law-abiding citizens. But Osborne’s physical innards are not
the only thing being dissected: anatomy theater brings into focus the subjectivities inherent in
observation, questioning the authority of science made spectacle in the name of an illusory
moral hierarchy. anatomy theater features performances from Peabody Southwell (Sarah
Osborne), Marc Kudisch (Joshua Crouch), Robert Osborne (Baron Peel), and Timur (Ambrose
Strang), as well as the International Contemporary Ensemble, conducted by Christopher
Rountree. Lang’s first Cantaloupe opera recording was 2015’s the difficulty of crossing a
field.

Lang is known for his vocal music, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning the little match girl
passion, and for writing narrative music for dance, films, and theatrical productions, as well as
his own operas. He earned Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, and Academy Award nominations
for his music for Paolo Sorrentino's film Youth. Their collaboration began when Sorrentino
used Lang's music in his Academy Award-winning La Grande Bellezza. Most recently, Lang
scored Paul Dano's directorial debut, Wildlife, as well as Patty Jenkins’s limited series I Am
the Night.

Lang’s 2019 opera prisoner of the state recently had its European premiere with the BBC
Symphony Orchestra at London’s Barbican Centre. With a libretto by the composer that
refers self-consciously to Beethoven’s Fidelio, prisoner of the state is the story of a woman
who disguises herself as a prison guard to rescue her husband from unjust political
imprisonment. The piece, which was premiered last season by co-commissioner New York
Philharmonic with Jaap van Zweden conducting, refines the unrealized political potential
of Fidelio, bringing to center stage the concepts of imprisonment, free will, and political
power. Later in the season, prisoner of the state will tour continental Europe with
performances by the Bochum Symphony, Malmö Opera, and Orquestra OBC.