Adams: Violin Concerto/Shaker Loops
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Free Music Notes for Adams: Violin Concerto/Shaker Loops
Free Music Review: Relentless and Uninspired
Hit: 1 Stars
This is Adams at his worst.He can be flash(as in Faast Ride,loopalooza etc) but at least those pieces sound like good film music at best.
The Violin concerto to me actually does'nt sound at all like Adams!! I am really surprised people who like Harmonium(his best piece by far) like this.It is actually very unpleasant to listen to.
It is relentless(why does'nt Adams like rests?!!), tedious and actually plain dull and uninspired.There appears to be NO direction in the first movement,just like a boring inmprovisation.And yes I have tried to hear it quite a few times.
The second movement is the best but sounds a bit like bad Frank Martin(a wonderful Swiss composer who mixed atonality and tonlity with much success)I advise readers to listen to Martin;s 'Petite Concertante'.Adams is just not good at trying to incoprporate atonal elements with tonal ones-he also just sounds like bad Ives here.
The last movement is typical of Adams-very flash technically but no substance.It is again relentless but just plain tedious,empty and machine music.It is reminiscent of the Barber but that at least DOES have depth even though I am not a big fan of that (though Adams could learn from Barber's first movement which is lovely,breathes and has rests!!).
This is all a shame as Adams in Harmonium showed he could write music that breathed and was really musical.
Free Music Review: A Conversation Among Violin, Orchestra and Audience
Hit: 5 Stars
Hard to believe that John Adams' virtuosic and inordinately beautiful VIOLIN CONCERTO is already over ten years old. Works that have followed this important challenge for the composer, works such as 'Naive and Sentimental Music' and 'El Nino', show significant seeds in this work that is rapidly becoming standard repertoire among the fine violinists of today.
Though this initial recording (there will doubtless be many more) is pungent and the playing by Gidon Kremer is remarkably facile, the concerto really comes alive when heard in the concert hall where the interaction (conversation if you will) between the solo violin and the orchestra extends into the audience response. After hearing the elegance and fire of Leila Josefowicz (probably the leading contender for this concerto) with the LA Philharmonic in the acoustic of Disney Hall there were few words to describe how communicative this concerto can be: Josefowicz is less strident and more caressing than Kremer's work on this CD.
Surely some of Adams most romantic music is in the movement Chaconne: Body through which the dream flows. The violin statements or questions find response in the massed strings, in the massed winds, and in the electric keyboards that come as close to transcendental meditation as anything written today.
Kent Nagano provides full-bodied support and his reading of the expanded orchestration of 'Shaker Loops' proves that die-hards who prefer the chamber version should listen again. This is another key recording of the output of one on America's most beloved contemporary composers, and until others (especially Josefowicz) come along, this will be the standard. Grady Harp, November 2004
Free Music Review: Quit calling it minimalism!
Hit: 5 Stars
I think if John Adams were to read some of the earlier reviews that referred to him as a minimalist and to these pieces as minimalist works, he would hunt down the reviewers at all costs. These pieces do show some influence of the minimalist period, but both pieces are such richly vested with luscious melodies and a strong sense of change that we'd be insane to label them as minimalist.Kremer, always a consummate musician, provides us with yet another gorgeous recording. Kent Nagano, the conductor, works well with kremer here - the LSO's attack on this piece perfectly parallels Kremer's slicing approach. The piece will swell to points where you'd think the speakers would burst from the intensity, and then drop back down to a quiet, almost sinister set of pizzicati lines.
It's quite a rush. This piece is definitely in the running for one of the great violin concerti of the 20th century
Free Music Review: Two of minimalism's finest works
Hit: 5 Stars
These two works by American composer John Adams, "Violin Concerto" (1993) and "Shaker Loops" (1977, revised 1983) are two of the finest minimalist works I've ever heard. Adams is one of the few minimalist composers that has evolved into something else. He hasn't limited himself strictly to that genre. The earlier of these two works "Shaker Loops" is the more traditionally minimalist of the two. Even then, it is still breaking away from strict minimalism. The pulsating repetiveness is still there, but there are more lyrical passages that release and provided a much needed rest from the intensity of the hard repetition. Scored for string orchestra, its often hard to imagine that only strings are making these sounds.
The "Violin Concerto" concerto is easily the more mature of the two works. At this point in his career, Adams is definately "post-minimalist" (all these labels mean virtually nothing!) New music advocate Gidon Kremer is the perfect choice as soloist for this piercing, energetic and exciting work. It is a piece often brimming with energy. It is also important that such a major contemporary composer is going back and returning to a very popular and traditional form considering that most modern composers do whatever they see fit by either inventing new forms or abandoning form entirely. The violin almost never stops completely overpowering the orchestra's understated but excellent part. The third movement in particular is quite unlike most violin concertos. Very spiky and fun.
A splendid pair of works by one of today's most famour composers. The violin concerto, especially is worth checking out.
Free Music Review: Cutting edge music
Hit: 5 Stars
This disc is extraordinary: the orchestral playing is clean and well recorded, and Gidon Kremer executes the solo part with color and precision. Adams's violin concerto is one of his better works. It is very lyrical, rhapsodic. The harmonies are some of his more advanced, and this concerto produces some of the most beautiful sounds that have never been created before.
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