Adams' Apple-Cart (John Coolidge, that is!)

[Karl Henning]

I have the same feeling about it. The outer movements have so much busy passagework in them, perhaps because the material just isn't that memorable.

On the other hand, I do have to say that the ending of the opening movement, where the tempo drops and ideas from the slow movement start appearing, is one of the most magical moments in Adams' work. And the slow movement itself is very fine, and IMO it's the slow movements that often let orchestral Adams down (for example in Naive and Sentimental Music).

Overall, this accords with my own experience: moments of apparent mastery, but hardly a piece which in its entirety impresses with unalloyed excellence.

[Mirror Image]

Another favorite work: Naive and Sentimental Music -

Virtually a large-scale symphony, Naïve and Sentimental Music is one of the most powerful and varied of the many orchestral compositions of one of America's best-known living composer. Its arching, soaring melodies seem part of a quest to reconcile the artist's battle between instinct and calculation. Few new works of its magnitude have been so instantly and widely accepted as Naïve and Sentimental. John Adams seems to love dichotomies. Commentators often note the split between his "trickster" works such as Grand Pianola Music and Fearful Symmetries and his introspective works (most especially The Wound Dresser). He composes at a retreat on land located ten miles from the ocean in Northern California, a place where the cool, coastal redwood fog climate abruptly meets the dry, hot inland coastal range.

The title of the work comes from Schiller's essay "Über naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung" (On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry), where "naïve" refers to poetic creation directly from within, without self-analysis or historical reference. The opposite, creation with constant personal second-guessing and conscious reference to the past, Schiller called sentimentalische. In general, the work involves a search for more of Schiller's naïveté. Adams has always been a "sentimental" composer; even his adoption of the naïve-sounding simplicity of his early minimalist style was a result of a decision based on historical awareness that the prevailing post-serial style was breaking up. But he seeks more spontaneity, naïveté, and in a sense portrays that search here. The first movement, sharing the title of the whole work and taking 18 minutes of the 45-minute work, starts with a beautiful naïve theme for flute above plucked harp and guitar. It has popular accents and a gentle, lightly swinging gait. Throughout the course of the movement, it goes through all sorts of emotional and dramatic changes, soaring and roaring. Its tendency to make sudden, wide leaps spontaneously keeps it fresh and often draws it into breathtaking high string lines. This is a highly dramatic movement that builds and builds. As Adams' friend and colleague Ingram Marshall wrote in the Nonesuch Records liner notes, "it's a trip." Adams himself adopted this metaphor in a letter written after he had heard the piece played by three different orchestras: "...a journey (with no known destination; the trip's the thing)...." Adams calls the second movement "Mother of the Man." Earlier, he had made an orchestral arrangement of the Berceuse élégiaque by Ferruccio Busoni, which that composer subtitled "Cradle Song of the Man at the Coffin of His Mother." Adams' music attempts to fill an empty feeling with a mostly successful effort to call music out of the strong emotions of that image. The finale, "Chain to the Rhythm," is in fact an essay in gathering rhythmic force that is ultimately released in an explosive coda. It is built from very small interlocking rhythmic cells and has a large percussion section delicately used for color until the earthquake of the final bars.

[Taken from All Music Guide]

[Mirror Image]

I have the same feeling about it. The outer movements have so much busy passagework in them, perhaps because the material just isn't that memorable.

On the other hand, I do have to say that the ending of the opening movement, where the tempo drops and ideas from the slow movement start appearing, is one of the most magical moments in Adams' work. And the slow movement itself is very fine, and IMO it's the slow movements that often let orchestral Adams down (for example in Naive and Sentimental Music).

I think the Violin Concerto is a masterpiece. There's not a weak moment in the whole work IMHO. Now, Fearful Symmetries, on the other hand, I despise. Someone needs to put that work out of it's misery and quick.

Every major composer is going to have works we don't like. That's just the way it is. You can't have a home run every time the composer steps up to bat, but I certainly can understand your sentiments regarding the Violin Concerto. It's not an 'easy' work to appreciate and it took me several years to fully grasp it.

[Mirror Image]

Harmonium -

Composed in 1981, at the point when minimalism was moving toward audience-pleasing ethereality and away from the audience-alienating repetition of the 1960s and 1970s that gave birth to the genre, John Adams' Harmonium was, in fact, already looking ahead to the "post-minimalist" style that Adams would forge with works such as The Death of Klinghoffer (1991) and the Violin Concerto (1993). With its alternating passages of throbbing minimal textures and dramatic lyricism, Harmonium hinted at a more exploratory vein. The piece sets three texts, one by the English poet John Donne and the other two by Emily Dickinson. The Donne piece, entitled Negative Love or The Nothing, is set to music that begins with simple repeated tones sung on single syllables. As the tones expand into chords, the syllables expand into the opening lines of the text. The polyrhythmic juxtapositions of twos against threes and threes against fours, stock elements of the minimalist palette, suddenly become even more obtuse, in order, paradoxically, to emphasize the declamation of the text. This situation creates a free space in which varied rhythms add new drama to the blocks of harmony and webs of accompaniment.

The middle movement sets Dickinson's pensive Because I Could Not Stop for Death. The suspension of time implicit in the poem is portrayed musically by long-suspended harmonies in the strings. The impetus, then, is no longer the rhythm of the text so much as the mood conjured up by the poetic discourse, a mood expressed by blocks of harmonies and slight dissonances suspended long enough to succumb to any resolution. As the poem progresses, so do the rhythmic tension and activity, carrying the work boldly and without pause into the final movement. The sensuality that -- except in the title -- is largely implicit in the third text, Wild Nights, is made explicit in the music. A sudden metric shift marks the movement's beginning, which brims with the sort of grandiose melodic-rhythmic complexes for which Adams is best known. As in the first movement, the declamation of the text lends rhythmic variety to the lines sung above the accompanying web. The exclamatory passages in the text provide opportunity for corresponding orchestral emphases and bursts of instrumental color. The first two stanzas of the poem, full of anticipation and Romantic anxiety, give way to more tranquilly sensual imagery: "Rowing in Eden -- Ah, the sea!" Rhythmic energy is reined in, and undulating incantations of "rowing" flow underneath the remainder of the text, drawing it to an idyllic close.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Another favorite work: Naive and Sentimental Music -

This and Harmonielehre are probably my favorite works by Adams. Yes, I know, one partially recaps the other, but in an interesting and diverse way.

Harmonium -

Am planning to hear it this summer at the Grant Park festival, where it's coupled with The Rite of Spring.

[Mirror Image]

This and Harmonielehre are probably my favorite works by Adams. Yes, I know, one partially recaps the other, but in an interesting and diverse way.

Am planning to hear it this summer at the Grant Park festival, where it's coupled with The Rite of Spring.

You're a lucky man! I'd love to see Harmonium live. Maybe one day...

Yes, Naive & Sentimental Music is a fine work, but there are many Adams works which I have come to appreciate after many listens. It took a year or so to finally appreciate Naive & Sentimental Music. My initial reaction was "Somebody put this work out of it's misery." Patience reaps multiple rewards.

[lescamil]

My initial reaction was "Somebody put this work out of it's misery."

I've been in that stage for a while for Naive and Sentimental music. I've come around to Harmonielehre, a work that never really got to me, and I enjoy it now. I would hesitate to call it a real masterpiece though. The second movement is great stuff, though.

[Mirror Image]

I've been in that stage for a while for Naive and Sentimental music. I've come around to Harmonielehre, a work that never really got to me, and I enjoy it now. I would hesitate to call it a real masterpiece though. The second movement is great stuff, though.

I feel that Harmonielehre is a masterpiece and I knew you were lukewarm about the work but it's good that you're enjoying it now. I think it's one of those works that pushed the genre of Minimalism into it's final overdrive. I feel it was just as important a work as Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. If I could only take one Adams work to the desert island it would be Harmonielehre. So many riches to be found.

[TheGSMoeller]

Harmonielehre and Grand Pianola Music are his best. I especially love the diverse orchestration of Pianola, winds, percussion, female singers and 2 pianos. My choices for these two works...

 

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Harmonielehre and Grand Pianola Music are his best. I especially love the diverse orchestration of Pianola, winds, percussion, female singers and 2 pianos. My choices for these two works...

I like that recording of Pianola mainly for the Chamber Symphony. I haven't really warmed to Pianola yet. I agree about Harmonielehre though.

[not edward]

Reading around a few places, it seems that Nonesuch will release next year a recording containing City Noir and the new Saxophone Concerto. Timothy McAllister is the soloist in the concerto; both pieces are performed by the St Louis Symphony. The conductor's not mentioned, but I assume it's likely to be David Robertson.

http://www.nonesuch.com/journal/john-adams-saxophone-concerto-us-premiere-baltimore-symphony-orchestra-ecstatic-ride-2013-09-23

[Mirror Image]

Harmonielehre and Grand Pianola Music are his best.

I would say Adams has composed many more great works besides these two works, Greg. As great as they are, they aren't the only Adams works worthy of my time. There are so many other gems in his oeuvre that deserve attention, too.

[Mirror Image]

Reading around a few places, it seems that Nonesuch will release next year a recording containing City Noir and the new Saxophone Concerto. Timothy McAllister is the soloist in the concerto; both pieces are performed by the St Louis Symphony. The conductor's not mentioned, but I assume it's likely to be David Robertson.

http://www.nonesuch.com/journal/john-adams-saxophone-concerto-us-premiere-baltimore-symphony-orchestra-ecstatic-ride-2013-09-23

I didn't care for City Noir, but Dudamel's performance in his inaugural concert with the LA Philharmonic didn't exactly impress me either. Will be curious to hear the Saxophone Concerto, though.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Will be curious to hear the Saxophone Concerto, though.

Me too. We need more saxophone concertos! I have a personal interest in this, as my stepson is studying classical saxophone.

[Mirror Image]

Me too. We need more saxophone concertos! I have a personal interest in this, as my stepson is studying classical saxophone.

Cool, Velimir. Hopefully, Nonesuch has something up their sleeve and they do according to Edward's post. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[lescamil]

The saxophone concerto is pretty good. It isn't as bombastic or orchestrally colorful as I had hoped for (I was expecting something like the violin concerto), for it uses smaller forces and has no percussion. However, it still really shows off what Tim McAllister (the soloist it was dedicated to) is capable of. It really has some great "wow" moments of virtuosity. I think the St. Louis Symphony will be recording it soon.

[not edward]

A very negative review of the new Chandos Harmonielehre from Andrew Clements today:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/14/adams-harmonielehre-doctor-atomic-symphony-review

[Brian]

Adams' new violin concerto, "Scheherazade 2", will be premiered next season by Leila Josefowicz and the New York Philharmonic.

[Mirror Image]

Adams' new violin concerto, "Scheherazade 2", will be premiered next season by Leila Josefowicz and the New York Philharmonic.

What a cool dumb name for a VC.

[lescamil]

What a cool dumb name for a VC.

Agreed. It's worse than "Son of Chamber Symphony". I like things like good ol' "String Quartet" and other absolute, mundane names. I'll have to tune in for the NYPhil broadcast next year and peruse the score when it appears online.