John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives
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Free Music Notes for John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives
Free Music Review: Gorgeous and Accomplished
Hit: 5 Stars
More evidence that John Adams is one of the world's greatest living composers. Both works are full of the beauty and complexity that we have come to hope for from the composer of Nixon in China, Harmonielehre, and Century Rolls. The Ives piece is possibly the most brilliant imitation of another composer I have ever heard. Highly recommended to any serious music lover.Free Music Review: beautiful
Hit: 5 Stars
I'm a pianist and i find The Dharma at Big Sur to be one of the most beautiful pieces i've ever heard. The Ives piece is good, but i'm not too crazy about it.Free Music Review: a tribute to American originals
Hit: 4 Stars
John Adams revels in being an American composer, and the two works presented here are each tributes to American mavericks.
"The Dharma at Big Sur" is a concerto for electric violin and orchestra. The first movement, "A New Day," is dedicated to West Coast composer Lou Harrison, a pioneer of just intonation. The second movement is dedicated to Terry Riley, of "In C" fame, another California pioneer who helped birth (for better or worse) the minimalist movement. "Dharma" is a lovely piece, performed here by Tracy Silverman and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Adams himself conducting. The first movement is slow and meditative, and the second movement speeds up, becoming more ecstatic and altogether more Rileyesque. This work is the reason I sought out this disc, partly because of the subject matter (Adams discusses the Buddhism of Kerouac and the Beats in the liner notes, though he does not mention the Beat and Zen poet Gary Snyder, and Riley is a devotee of the Indian teacher Pandit Pran Nath), and partly because I love the violin.
"My Father Knew Charles Ives" is an orchestral work, clearly modeled on Ives's "Three Places in New England," and with a section in the first movement much like the marching band cacophony of the second movement of Ives's splendid "Symphony No. 4." The work was commissioned by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra -- MTT is, of course, well-known for his championing of Ives. The second movement, "The Lake," is a nocturne, and the third movement, "The Mountain," concludes energetically with a surging passage that according to Adams represents the final ascent to a peak in the Sierra Nevadas.
The performances by the BBCSO are superb, as is the Nonesuch art. I question placing these less-than-30-minute works on their own discs, but other than that the packaging is excellent. A note to Amazon -- the Edward Weston photo from 1931, "Shell and Rock Arrangement," makes a much better cover than the photo of Adams's father & fellow players. My overall opinion of the over-rated Adams has not changed, but these are pleasing pieces, especially "The Dharma at Big Sur."
Free Music Review: toward the oceanic
Hit: 4 Stars
after listening to the dharma, inspired by jack kerouac's late writings, i had a look at my copy of adams' on the transmigration of souls for the compositional dates, the two pieces having much in common as to stand as companion pieces. which is to say there is a deepening of a style at play in adams' work.
the second recording, my father knew charles ives, owes much to ives, particularly the musical tension, adams, like ives, never lets the listener forget that marching band music on celebrated holidays is in memory of men and women who fought in wars.
the oceanic feeling, something vast and awesome and grand, feelings experienced in response to a tragedy or intense beauty. adams is challenged by some big questions to which he provides musical answers the best that he can.
his linear notes on his influences are worth reading, too.
Free Music Review: Adams gets his groove back...
Hit: 4 Stars
My Father Knew... is little more than a skillful if somewhat bland symphonic Ives pastiche, but John Adams sort of gets his groove back in The Dharma At Big Sur -- a rhapsodic, rambling, and rather trippy fantasia for electric violin and orchestra. It's not very polished and it's actually a little tacky... and that's exactly what's great about it. (Hey, why on Earth did Nonesuch release less than an hour of music as a two CD set? tsk-tsk...)