Classical

John Adams - City Noir (Dudamel) (2013)

2019-05-22T14:55:26Z

John Adams - City Noir (Dudamel) (2013)


1.The City And Its Double	13:26
2.The Song Is For You		8:42
3.Boulevard Night		12:24

Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel - conductor

John Adams’ City Noir was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and premiered by Gustavo Dudamel in his debut concert as the orchestra’s music director (the same concert that yielded the previously released Mahler Symphony No. 1–type Q12491 in Search Reviews).

City Noir is a three-movement work of symphonic style and dimensions that pays homage (in a non-overt manner) to Hollywood film music of the 1950s. The first movement, The City and its Double, opens with a motoric busyness that grows increasingly frenzied before relaxing into the kind of dreamy, rhapsodic, soaring music familiar from Adams’ Harmonielehre. From this state the first movement dissolves into the second, This Song is for You. Here Adams seems to channel his inner Charles Ives as discordant brass clusters mash-up with extended, Duke Ellington-style trombone solos, evoking the kind of boozy delirium found in The Lost Weekend.

This gets blown away quite effectively by the Boulevard Nights finale, with its even more frantic activity (recalling the cartoon-inspired mania of Adams’ Chamber Symphony). About two-thirds of the way through, Adams introduces a syncopated “Martinu rhythm” that sounds more threatening each time it appears. The composer is an expert at building climaxes of tremendous rhythmic energy and raw sonic power, and he does so here, bringing the piece to a roof-raising conclusion.

Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic go all out for this music, offering a gripping and highly persuasive performance that sounds fine in Deutsche Grammophon’s live recording. Adams’ City Noir is a powerful, highly original piece that likely needs a couple of hearings to get a real sense of how it all holds together. But the effort is well worth it. Recommended. ---Victor Carr Jr, classicstoday.com

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John Adams - El Nino

2010-04-16T10:03:55Z

John Adams - El Nino

CD1
1. I Sing Of A Maiden	 6:18
2. Hail Mary, Gracious!	4:47
3. La Annunciacion	9:34
4. For With God Nothing Shall Be Impossible	1:15
5. The Babe Leaped In Her Womb	3:30
6. Magnificat	3:23
7. Now She Was Sixteen Years Old	3:20
8. Joseph's Dream	4:32
9. Shake The Heavens	5:54
10. Se Habla De Gabriel	8:26
11. The Christmas Star      6:45

CD2
1. Pues Mi Dios Ha Nacido A Penar	 4:33
2. When Herod Heard	 2:28
3. Woe Unto Them That Call Evil Good	4:22
4. And The Star Went Before Them	2:26
5. The Three Kings	5:25
6. And When They Were Departed	1:11
7. Dawn Air	4:22
8. And He Slew All The Children	1:43
9. Memorial Del Tlateloloco	9:12
10. In The Day Of The Great Slaughter	3:20
11. Pues Esta Tiritando	3:35	
12. Jesus And The Dragons	2:50
13. A Palm Tree	7:57

Steven Rickards,  Lorraine Hunt Lieberson,  
Dawn Upshaw,  Willard White
Berlin German Symphony Orchestra
Kent Nagano – conductor

El Niño is an opera-oratorio by the American composer John Adams. It was premiered on December 15, 2000 at Paris's Théâtre du Châtelet by the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra and soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White, with Kent Nagano conducting. It has been performed on a number of occasions since, and has been broadcast on BBC television. Described by Adams as a "nativity oratorio", the piece is designed to be performed equally well in both concert and stage settings, and uses texts from the King James Bible, Wakefield Mystery Plays and poems by Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos as well as Adams and librettist Peter Sellars. It retells the Christmas story, with the first half of focusing on Mary's thoughts before the birth and the second half on the aftermath of the birth in the stable in Bethlehem, Herod's slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the early life of Jesus. The text follows the traditional biblical story of the birth of Jesus but also incorporates poetry from a wide range of sources. Included are poems by Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, and Rubén Dario. The work also includes selected passages from the Wakefield Mystery Play, Martin Luther’s Christmas Sermon, the Gospel of Luke, and several "gnostic" gospels from the Apocrypha. John Adams also quotes Gabriela Mistral’s "The Christmas Star" and a choral setting of "O quam preciosa" by Hildegard von Bingen.

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John Adams - Scheherazade.2 (2016)

2017-06-12T14:16:08Z

John Adams - Scheherazade.2 (2016)

Dramatic Symphony for Violin and Orchestra
I. Tale of the Wise Young Woman – Pursuit by the True Believers
II. A Long Desire (love scene)
III. Scheherazade and the Men with Beards
IV. Escape, Flight, Sanctuary

Leila Josefowicz - violin
Chester Englander - cimbalom
St. Louis Symphony
David Robertson - conductor

You'd get differing answers to the question of whether John Adams is America's greatest living composer, but he's the one to whom the country turned in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The demand for new work from him has only increased since he achieved senior citizen status. Fortunately, he's been able to meet that demand with distinctive large-scale works. Consider 2016's Scheherazade.2, recorded here by the violinist who premiered the work, Leila Josefowicz, with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson. The piece succeeds on several levels. It is, outwardly, as close as Adams has come to writing a big Romantic violin concerto, and it will no doubt be welcomed into the concert repertory as such. Yet go into it more deeply, and it seems less a concerto than -- well, what, exactly? Adams calls it a "dramatic symphony." English critic Nick Breckenfield has compared it to Berlioz's Harold in Italy, with the soloist representing an individual making her way through a series of adventures that may have a threatening tinge. Adams was inspired to write the work after visiting an exhibition in Paris devoted to Scheherazade and the Thousand and One Nights, and the work has a bit of feminist critique woven into its unusual structure. The four movements, traditional in their outer shapes, are each loosely programmatic, and except for the second, "A Long Desire," each presents the heroine under some kind of pressure from male figures. Sample the third movement, "Scheherazade and the Men with Beards," where she seems to be surrounded by a chattering group of religious leaders who disagree among themselves. Scheherazade elbows her way into the discussion at times. Josefowicz's sharp-edged style is ideal for the work, and the St. Louis Symphony excels in the music's give and take. Adams has produced at once a worthy successor to the long tradition of Scheherazade pieces in classical music, and one that, as so often with Adams, pokes the tradition in which it works. ---James Manheim, AllMusic Review

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John Adams - Violin Concerto (Leila Josefowicz) [2018]

2018-05-22T15:15:45Z

John Adams - Violin Concerto (Leila Josefowicz) [2018]


1	Violin Concerto: I. Quarter-note = 78	14:45 	
2	Violin Concerto: II. Chaconne - Body Through Which the Dream Flows	10:58 	
3	Violin Concerto: III. Toccare	7:24 

Leila Josefowicz - violin
St. Louis Symphony
David Robertson - conductor

Throughout his composing career, John Adams has generally avoided explicit genre titles such as symphony or concerto for his orchestral works. He has now composed a whole series of scores of genuine symphonic proportions and weight, from the epic Harmonielehre in 1985 to City Noir of 2009, while pieces such as Century Rolls, for piano and orchestra, and Gnarly Buttons, with solo clarinet, are concertos in all but name. But it’s never been a hard and fast rule, and as early as 1993, Adams produced a Violin Concerto that was called simply that, without any more fanciful title or explicit extra-musical connotations.

In many ways it’s the nearest thing to “absolute music” that he has ever composed. The concerto was written for the then leader of the Minnesota Orchestra, Jorja Fleezanis, but it was Gidon Kremer who recorded it first (also for Nonesuch). Over the last 15 years or so, Leila Josefowicz has been most closely identified with it. Adams’ regard for Josefowicz’s passionately engaged playing has led him to compose another large-scale work for violin and orchestra for her, Scheherazade 2 (which, to confuse things further, he calls a “dramatic symphony”), and she has now performed the concerto more than 100 times. She has even recorded it before, on what’s now a rather obscure disc, with the composer himself conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

This new version, though, with David Robertson conducting the St Louis Symphony, vividly demonstrates the quality of Josefowicz’s playing, which manages to be both full-blooded and immensely refined at the same time. It also demonstrates the way Adams has so successfully reinvented the traditional concerto form in his own eclectic image, whether asserting the expressive power of melody in the first two movements, or in the sheer physicality of the final, irresistible moto perpetuo.

One of Adams’ essentially symphonic works that is not called a symphony, Naive and Sentimental Music from 1999, appears on the latest Chandos disc from Peter Oundjian and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. It’s a decent enough performance, if perhaps not quite so svelte and cogent as its only current rival, from Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Philharmonic, for whom the piece was written. The RSNO’s pairing, though, is Absolute Jest, for string quartet and orchestra, with the Doric Quartet as soloists, which seems to me one of Adams’ weakest recent works – a riff on Beethoven (the late quartets Opp 131 and 135 particularly) whose jokey borrowings wear very thin, very quickly. ---Andrew Clements, theguardian.com

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John Adams – Harmonielehre (Thomas)

2010-09-01T10:06:42Z

John Adams – Harmonielehre (Thomas)


1. Part I
2. Part II: The Anfortas Wound
3. Part III: Meister Eckhard and Quackie
4. Short Ride in a Fast Machine

San Francisco Symphony
Michael Tilson Thomas – conductor

Of the music by the four reigning minimalists in this country (Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley are the others), that of John Adams is perhaps the simplest, constructed on punctuated--and percussive--chords riding above coherent melodies. This is probably why Adams has had such success with his two operas. 'Harmonielehre' is a sustained orchestral piece in three sections--triptychs framing a slow second movement of unusual somberness, given the gaiety of the opening section. Part III, called "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie", is a sprightly fairy tale of shimmering, glissando-like textures underscored by a dignified flowing melody.

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John Adams – Son Of Chamber Symphony – String Quartet (2011)

2011-08-26T08:48:22Z

John Adams – Son Of Chamber Symphony – String Quartet (2011)


01 – Son Of Chamber Symphony I – International Contemporary Ensemble & John Adams
02 – Son Of Chamber Symphony II – International Contemporary Ensemble & John Adams		play
03 – Son Of Chamber Symphony III – International Contemporary Ensemble & John Adams
04 – String Quartet I – St. Lawrence String Quartet & John Adams
05 – String Quartet II – St. Lawrence String Quartet & John Adams

Musicians:

Son of Chamber Symphony:
International Contemporary Ensemble
John Adams, conductor
Claire Chase, executive director
Eric Lamb, flute, piccolo
Nicholas Masterson, oboe
Joshua Rubin, clarinet
Campbell MacDonald, bass clarinet
Rebekah Heller, bassoon
David Byrd, horn
Gareth Flowers, trumpet
David Nelson, trombone
Cory Smythe, piano, celesta
Nathan Davis, Ian Antonio, percussion
David Bowlin, Jennifer Curtis, violin
Maiya Papach, viola
Kivie Cahn-Lipman, cello
Scott Dixon, bass

String Quartet:
St. Lawrence String Quartet
Geoff Nuttall, violin
Scott St. John, violin
Lesley Robertson, viola
Christopher Costanza, cello

Nonesuch released John Adams’s Son of Chamber Symphony / String Quartet on May 31, 2011. Son of Chamber Symphony (2007) is performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), led by the composer, and Adams’s String Quartet (2008) is performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the ensemble for which the piece was written. This is the first recording of both works.

“As you might imagine, Son of Chamber Symphony is closely related to Chamber Symphony,” Adams recently explained in an interview for the London Sinfonietta. “The two are very similar in instrumentation: 15 players—a large chamber group, or a very small orchestra—which means everybody gets to be a soloist in one way or another. It gave me an opportunity to do the kind of challenging virtuoso writing that I would never attempt with a large orchestra. The new chamber symphony also has the same buoyant quality [as the original].” The piece was co-commissioned by the San Francisco Ballet for a new work by choreographer Mark Morris, entitled Joyride, which premiered in 2008.

String Quartet is Adams’ second full-sized work for that combination of instruments. His first, 1994’s John’s Book of Alleged Dances (Nonesuch, 1998), is a set of 11 short pieces written for Kronos Quartet. Hearing the St. Lawrence String Quartet perform that work inspired Adams to compose String Quartet for them, which led to its world premiere at The Juilliard School in 2009. Since then, the group has performed the work more than 50 times throughout North America, Europe, and New Zealand, including a critically acclaimed performance at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in March 2011. The Philadelphia Inquirer said of one of those concerts, “The piece is a knockout. Thanks to the St. Lawrence telepathic sense of ensemble, so was the performance.”

With a flexible roster of 33 leading instrumentalists performing in forces ranging from solos to large ensembles, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of our time and pursuing groundbreaking strategies for audience engagement. Since its founding in 2001, ICE has premiered more than 500 compositions, the bulk of them by emerging composers, in venues ranging from New York’s Lincoln Center and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art to galleries, bars, clubs, and schools around the world.

Established in 1989, the St. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ) has developed a reputation as a world-class chamber ensemble. The quartet performs more than 120 concerts annually worldwide and calls Stanford University, where the group is ensemble-in-residence, home. The SLSQ is committed to the great, established quartet literature and also champions new works by composers like John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, Eziquiel Vinao, and Jonathan Berger. The quartet comprises founding members Lesley Robertson (viola) and Geoff Nuttall (violin); cellist Christopher Costanza, who joined the group in 2003; and violinist Scott St. John, who joined in 2006.

Son of Chamber Symphony was commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts in honor of the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation during Lung Cancer Awareness Month, November 2007, with generous support from Van and Eddi Van Auken, and by The Carnegie Hall Corporation, and made possible in part by The Swanson Foundation in honor of San Francisco Ballet’s 75th Anniversary. It was choreographed as Joyride for the San Francisco Ballet by Mark Morris. Its world premiere was November 30, 2007, by Alarm Will Sound (Alan Pierson, conductor), at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University. Son of Chamber Symphony is dedicated to Ara Guzelimian.

String Quartet was commissioned by The Juilliard School (with generous support of the trust of Francis Goelet), Stanford Lively Arts, Stanford University, and The Banff Centre. Its world premiere was January 29, 2009, by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, at the Juilliard School. String Quartet is dedicated to Joseph Polisi.

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John Adams, etc … – Violin Concerto

2010-09-03T13:21:26Z

John Adams, etc … – Violin Concerto


1. Corigliano - Chaconne from The Red Violin
2. Enescu - Romanian Rhapsody N°1 (arr. Franz Waxman)
3. Waxman - Tristan and Isolde Fantasia
4. Adams - Violin Concerto - I. Crotchet = 78
5. Adams - Violin Concerto - II. Chaconne; Body Through Which the Dream Flows
6. Adams - Violin Concerto - III. Toccare

Chloë Hanslip: violin
Charles Owen: piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin – director

The 1993 Violin Concerto - now, strictly speaking, the "First Violin Concerto" - gets its fourth recording (it seems to have become "hugely popular", as the CD box has it, and I'm glad to hear it). Ms. Hanslip is a fine player, as you have to be to manage this knotty masterpiece, and she fares well against the high-level competition. Stephen Haller raver about her Bruch concertos(M/S 2003), and I can only second his comments about her golden tone and assured command. I think, we can dismiss the ragged Kremer (Nonesuch) and also safely put aside Robert McDuffee's Telarc (J/F 2000). That puts the main competition between this and Leyla Josefowicz on BBC's Late Junction label ( with the composer conducting, J/F 2004). I like Ms Josefowicz's recording more this time around and appreciated the extra presence of the composer and the audience. It's hard to say enough about Ms Josefowicz's playing, which seems to grow in vividness on every hearing. Ms Hanslip is altogether mellower, even suave. She and conductor Slatkin stress clarity and detail and give the work a warmer, more laidback approach, but with a clear sense of dramatic purpose. I honestly like both recordings.

Ms Hanslip has cinema and theater in her background - she was the "infant prodigy violinist" in the film adaptation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin with Ralph Fiennes and premiered Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantasia on Phantom of the Opera; the choice of companion pieces reflects this tendency. The opening piece on this program is a Chaconne based on the two principal materials from John Corigliano's score for The Red Violin : the slowly rising scale of the main title and the big mushy tune, 'Anna's Theme'. I must confess I'm clueless as to how specifically this is a Chaconne. It sounds to me simply like a fantasy on cues from the film, and it doesn't work very well as a concert piece. Don't confuse this with the Red Violin Suite, recorded by Eleanora Turovsky and chamber orchestra on Chandos (S/O 2005, with a reduced version of Corigliano's Second Symphony). I didn't think much of that either.

I guess the brief virtuosic conclusion of Enesco's First Romanian Rhapsody, in an arrangement for violin and orchestra by movie music composer Franz Waxman, is meant to serve as a Red Violin continuation (or encore). What other artistic purpose it serves is beyond this review's imagination. Waxman returns in a Tristan and Isolde Fantasia, originally the climax of the 1946 film Humoresque. It makes Wagner sound like Hollywood (rather than the other way around), complete with corny piano arpeggiations and mooning violin commentaries. Yuck.

I'm afraid those fillers place the Adams Concerto in an odd light, as if it were some kind of pops concert entry. It's not. I hope the young and breathtakingly talented Ms Hanslip resists that well-worn road, which management might foist on her if she doesn't take charge herself. She's a beautiful player, and her Adams is well worth hearing. I suppose the hope is that a coupling like this will sell records, and the unwashed masses will move up to the Adams somehow. I doubt that strategy works. --- American Record Guide, February 2007

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