Adams: Naive and Sentimental Music

This is another major Adams work, dating from the late 1990s, that up to now escaped my attention. I guess that buying the 10 CD Nonesuch Earbox, many years ago, made me a little complacent, assuming that I had everything there was to have by this composer. But Adams is alive and kicking and time moves on. Furthermore, as in Dharma at Big Sur the innocuous title belies the grand ambitions of this big symphonic piece. Finally, even when I snapped up the album at iTunes for a paltry 2,49 euro I was under the impression that I was duplicating another recording in my collection. But very soon it became clear that I was mixing up Naive and Sentimental Music with Common Tones in Simple Time, Adams very first orchestral composition from 1979.

So maybe someone should give John Adams the friendly advice to let go of the fancy titles and simply label this piece, say, Symphony nr. 4 (after Harmonium, Harmonielehre and El Dorado as numbers 1, 2 and 3, respectively). Because there is no doubt that Naive and Sentimental Music is a symphony, and one with grand ambitions to boot. By the way, in his biography, Halleluja Junction, Adams himself has no qualms in referring to this work as such.

It's a three part work that lasts about 45 minutes, giving it pride of place as Adams' longest orchestral composition. In his biography Adams reminisces that the creative impetus for the work came from attending a rehearsal of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Philharmonic. Up that point, Adams hadn't bothered much with Bruckner. But here he was intrigued by the "long, leisurely accretions of mass and energy", suggesting mountain ranges in the distance. He added that Bruckners formal technique, "although in one sense quite textbook conventional, was nevertheless strange and mysterious, reminding me of certain slow-motion cinematic techniques." It is telling that Adams condenses these observations in visual impulses which then seem to stir his creative energy.

The title of the work is drawn from Schiller's well-known essay in which the German writer contrasts two types of artist: the 'naive' or 'unconscious' who does not experience a cleft between himself and the medium of his artistic expression, and the 'sentimental' or 'self-conscious' for whom this primordial, sensuous unity is gone. Adams sees the struggle to recapture the naive stance as "one of the great gestures in the history of all artistic endeavour". Honestly, whilst I have nothing against the mixing of music and ideas, I find this to be a rather dubious and over-intellectualized starting point for a symphonic work that is supposed to breathe an integrative inner logic. Likely, Adams is aware of the disconnect as (in his biography) he is at pains to stress that Naive and Sentimental Music does not take its title too literally: "the essence of the piece is the presence of very simple material (...) which exist in the matrix of a larger, more complex formal structure." The nature images, the Brucknerian inspiration and the structural integration of bathetic elements in a large canvas all hint at a programme with a marked Mahlerian signature.

Whilst Adams evokes images of majestic nature ('mountain ranges in the distance') as seminal impulses, for me the music projects a brash, urban mood. The piece kicks off in the most unostentatious way possible, with what Adams refers to as a 'naive' theme on flute, accompanied with a strumming guitar. But maybe the theme is not so naive after all. I had the definite impression that I heard it already elsewhere and came to the conclusion that the first bar or so shows an uncanny resemblance with a theme Mahler used in Der Abschied, the last song in Das Lied von der Erde. I'm thinking more particularly of the instrumental music ('fließend') at Fig. 23, after the morendo passage that concludes the A minor recitative. Adams' melody, harmony, rhythm and orchestration are very similar (Mahler uses double flutes accompanied by mandoline and harp). However, the latter part of the naive theme, an irregularly descending 7-note pattern led me back to Strauss' Heldenleben, more specifically the brass theme that descends as a gleaming cataract to announce the Hero's victory over his critics. The naive theme a hybrid between snippets from Mahler and Strauss? Maybe only in my mind. Anyway, Adams takes some time to massage this material into position for an epic and craggy series of variations which remind me of Ruggles' stern expressionism rather than Bruckner. I truly like this 18 minute symphonic extravaganza. The LA Philharmonic play it marvelously under Salonen's guidance.

The second movement (Mother of the Man) provides ample relief after the excitement of Adams' opening gambit. Allegedly it's a gloss on Busoni's Berceuse Elegiaque (which I did not relisten). It's basically a romanza that revolves around a theme that is presented very slowly, almost drowsily, by the strings. The guitar musings and the bassoon solo reinforce the atmosphere of pastoral dolce far niente. Glockenspiel infuse the music with a solemn, mysterious mood. There is an animated middle section in which the somnolent string melody starts to be subjected to centrifugal forces. Suddenly Adams throws in magnificent chords for the lower brass (a moment of Bruckerian grandeur). A high trumpet momentarily opens a celestial door. As the panic in the orchestra subdues, the music return to the initial, quiet mood.

With the third movement (Chain to the Rhythm) we are back in familiar Adams territory. Adams: "Small fragments of rhythmic cells are moved back and forth among a variety of harmonic areas and in so doing create a chain of events that culminates in fast, virtuoso surge of orchestral energy." It's quite engaging but not totally convincing. I'm really missing a strong finale to provide counterweight to the epic opening movement and the 12 minute long slow movement. A shorter version of the now concluding third movement would have made a terrific scherzo. And then we would have needed a 12-14 minute, brazen finale (based on material from the movement's latter part) to cap the whole thing off.

So what to make of it all? I find Naive and Sentimental Music a great work but the finale lacks weight. Furthermore, whilst it is arguably one of the most symphonic things that Adams has yet written, to my mind it does not display the rhizomatic depth and breadth of development that one would expect from a truly, truly great symphony (say, of the calibre of a Shostakovich 10 or Mahler 9). I'd put it even a notch or two below Peter-Jan Wagemans' Zevende Symfonie that I was so enthralled with a few months ago. Nevertheless, I am quite happy to have discovered this very worthwhile symphonic piece.

Wanted to end with a brief comment on the very nice presentation of this Nonesuch release. I love the fantastic picture on the cover of the CD. It's an untitled exposure taken around 1883 by Gustavus Fagersteen of an overhanging rock in the Glacier Point area, Yosemite, with the hulking presence of Half Dome in the background.

Adams: Dharma at Big Sur

This is John Adams' 'other' violin concerto. I wasn't even aware that he had written one until I figured out that behind this catchy title was hiding a concerto for electric violin and orchestra. An electric violin is basically an electrically amplified violin which may or may not have a quite different tonal signature than an acoustic instrument. It's a rare appearance in the classical concert hall. Here Adams calls for a six-stringed solid-body instrument that is played in 'just' intonation, with intervals between the notes of the scale differently tuned than in Western, equal tempered manner. Also the piano and harps in the orchestra are tuned to just intonation.

As in the 1993 Violin Concerto the soloist very much dominates happenings. Once a Brucknerian tremolo has risen the curtain over California's jagged coastline at Big Sur the violin leads the equally capricious musical line with a bustling orchestra in attendance. The soloist's voice is littered with slidings and portamentos and sounds very improvisatory (but, make no mistake, everything is precisely written into the score) giving the piece a very exotic, Eastern feel. Yet the inspiration for this piece was profoundly Californian.

Adams wrote the music for the inauguration of LA's fabled Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003. The subtext for the two-movement work is provided by Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose (hence the references to Dharma and Big Sur) and by the accomplishments of Adams' older peers Lou Harrison and Terry Riley. Harrison was an American composer who often wrote in other tuning systems. Riley is one of the fathers of the so-called Minimalist movement. The first part of Dharma (A New Day; dedicated to Harrison) is a long and intense meditation, the second an ecstatic dance (Sri Moonshine; dedicated to Riley). The composer provides a rich description of the piece's background and structure on his website.

Dharma at Big Sur provides a very compelling listening experience. Initially I didn't like it as much as the Violin Concerto but after multiple auditions I'm valuing it quite highly. The piece forms one big crescendo arc from the whispering opening bars to the exultant finale. The mood is celebratory throughout and I find that Adams has been able to capture something of the profound and exuberant insouciance that is the hallmark of the best of Beat Generation.

This recording I listened to dates from 2005 and relies on the commissioning orchestra and its former musical director (Esa-Pekka Salonen) but features a different soloist (Leila Josefowicz) from the premiere (the American electric violin specialist Tracy Silverman). It has been issued under the DG Concerts label and is only available for downloading via iTunes or Amazon. I've listened (via YouTube) to the Nonesuch recording (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Adams and with Silverman as a soloist) for comparison and it seems to me that this is the one to go for. Silverman's playing is more imaginative and authoritative and the recording strikes me as airier than the live tape at Disney Concert Hall. With a delicately embroidered musical tapestry such as Dharma at Big Sur more air is certainly desirable.

Adams: On the Transmigration of Souls

On the Transmigration of Souls is Adams' response to the cataclysmic events at 9/11. He wrote it in 2002 in response to a commission of the New York PO and the Lincoln Center. Up to now I have studiously avoided this piece, for several reasons. First, because it is tied up with an event that is revolting and ambiguous in so many ways. There is the sheer vileness of the attack. But there is also the ensuing, manipulative abuse of the event by media and 'leaders' of all sorts. Furthermore, the oppressive weigthiness of the occasion seemed to sit uneasily with Adams' posture (from my perspective) as postmodern magpie and tongue-in-cheeck iconoclast.

Finally, it seems to me that music has very little to 'say' about these kinds of events. Sure, composers have been writing occasional pieces for ages and sometimes to splendid effect (take Britten's War Requiem or Shostakovich's Babi Yar as examples). But that doesn't mean that the music is in any way able to communicate about or help us to come to terms with trauma. Personally I don't believe in the all too commonplace conception of music as an expressive language. Music, for me, is architecture unfolding in time. These are 'tönend bewegte Formen' (Hanslick) that trigger our capacity for pattern recognition and for dealing with complexity in general. In their physical manifestation and physiological and psychological effects these forms may have a therapeutic effect (I'm the last to deny it) but we don't need metaphysics to talk about that.

Anyway, obviously, for me, Adams was skating on very thin ice with a piece like this. But I can't deny to also being to an extent curious about what this composer had made of the challenge. So now that I have been, for a while, dipping in and out of minimalist waters it looked like a good occasion to take the plunge and listen to the Transmigration.

At first I was disconcerted to see that the piece was at 25 minutes duration relatively short. The bombastic title had hinted at something more monumental. And also the fact that a full Nonesuch CD was devoted to the original recording with Maazel and the NYPO led me to expect a more substantial work. Rather pompous to confine this work on its own to a full CD, isn't it? Anyway the recording can now be purchased at mid price. 

I didn't have access to the Maazel version so I listened to the Telarc recording with the Atlanta SO and Chorus led by Robert Spano which is in my father's collection. My gut reaction after a first audition was: "too Spielbergian". Adams had myriads of choices to make when he started to find his way into the thicket of this major composition: understated or grandiose? abstract or programmatic? with or without text? canonic or vernacular words? Along all of these axes he seemed to have taken the easy way: a grandiose 'story' based on (recorded) words and ambient sounds of cinematographic simplicity. Macrostructurally the piece seemed to comply with a very simple template: an slow, silent introduction, a cathartic middle section followed by a return to the opening music (incidentally akin to Hartmann's Adagio (his Symphony nr. 2), a work in a somewhat similar vein).

I gave it a second try. Then read Adams' view on the piece from an interview on his earbox.com website. That was interesting. I learned that Adams had only 6 months to write the work. Hence the relatively short duration. Adams also makes clear that he didn't want to write a piece to 'remember' or 'heal'. His intention was rather to evoke a very basic, pre-cognitive experience similar to when one enters under the huge vault of a cathedral. It plays out at two levels: space and of history. The cathedral is experienced as a 'memory space'. And this is how Adams conceived his work. Adams: "It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions." The idea of a piece of music opening up a very basic (psychological and, why not, 'real') space fits my musical aesthetics better than the mindless mumbo jumbo of 'expression' that dominates contemporary discourse. It reminds me of Libeskind's design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin. What about the title then? Adams:

'Transmigration' means 'the movement from one place to another' or 'the transition from one state of being to another.' It could apply to populations of people, to migrations of species, to changes of chemical compositon, or to the passage of cells through a membrane. But in this case I mean it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience transformed.

Again there is the spatial metaphor. Obviously there is also some sort of narrative here that goes beyond the mere opening up of a memory space despite Adams' claim that he had no desire to create a musical description of any sorts. I guess it's almost impossible to do without. But, personally I would have opted for a much more discreet title that would steer free from all kinds of programmatic and metaphysical entanglements.

The music is what it is, of course, but this background information did predispose me more favourably towards the piece. And I became even more positive when I heard the 2003 live recording on Dutch Radio 4's Concerthuis with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra led by Edo de Waart. More so than the Spano rendering this had this static monumental quality that interpretatively seems to be more in line with Adams' conception. In this performance orchestra and choir blend into a (shockingly) beautiful and hypnotic symphonic tapestry.

What remains is the apprehension about the smoothness of the musical conception. Shouldn't there be nothing jarring about it? No barbs? I don't know. Whether this piece will stand the test of time remains to be seen. But for me it all in all confirmed Adams' artistic integrity.

Glass: Violin Concerto nr. 1 - Rorem: Violin Concerto - Adams: Violin Concerto - Bernstein: Serenade

My run of American violin concertos is petering out. I didn't look particularly forward to listening to Philip Glass' first Violin Concerto (1987) and the experience left me cold indeed. It's a genuine mystery how someone is able to sustain a 40-year long, incredibly prolific compositional career on such a narrow basis. All the pieces I've heard (not very many: his early film scores, early solo piano work, the Low Symphony, Itaipu, The Canyon, ...) fit in exactly the same mould. Truth be told I haven't listened to any of his innumerable operas. By now Glass is at his Ninth Symphony and judging by the audio fragments on Presto Classical this recent work does not go in any way beyond the structural, thematic and textural parameters we have been familiar with for decades. Anyway, I listened to two recordings of this concerto but neither Gidon Kremer (supported by the Vienna Philharmonic and Christoph von Dohnanyi, on DGG) nor Robert McDuffie (with the Houston Symphony under Eschenbach, on Telarc) were able to convince me of the work's allure.

The Telarc disc also contains a recording of John Adams' Violin Concerto which I revisited with considerable pleasure just a few weeks ago. I still prefer the Nonesuch recording where Kremer puts in a more imaginative performance.

Ned Rorem's Violin Concerto (1985) is the most attractive work on the DGG disc (which also contains the Bernstein Serenade). It's a six movement, symmetrically constructed, dusk-to-dawn piece that features some resourceful, mildly modernistic writing. Particularly the head and tail movements reconnect to the rugged feel of the Schuman concerto. The Romance without Words (third movement) makes an inevitable (it seems) reference to Coplandian pastoralism. The ensuing nocturne (Midnight), awash in floating, spectral chords transports us back to Vaughan Williams' most mystical and elated inspirations (Pastoral and Fifth Symphonies, for example). All in all this comes across as a product of good craftsmanship and I may pick up the competing Naxos recording if it ever crosses my path.

The Bernstein Serenade (1954) is a work that I yet have to discover. The composer's own recording with the Israel PO and Kremer as a soloist did not make a lasting impression. A few months ago I heard it in passing on Arte TV in a performance with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Patricia Kopatchinskaja (recording sadly no longer available) that I recall as more swinging and engaging.

Adams: Violin Concerto

Interesting to notice that I haven't listened to any work by John Adams since I started this listening diary. I generally admire this composer. It's his protean personality, his inspired mashing and hacking of genres and conventions that makes it worthwhile to keep tabs on his ever growing catalogue of works.

With his Violon Concerto (1993) Adams starts from the conventional tripartite structure of a concerto but he avoids the traditional opposition between soloist and orchestra. There is no genuine sense of development and no conflict. I'd characterise it rather as some sort of meditation or 'reverie'. In that sense the work, despite its classical garb, seems to betray Adams' minimalist roots.

The opening movement - crotchet = 76 - starts in medias res with the orchestra and violin enmeshed in a relentless, uncomfortable gyrating motion. It sounds like some stern disciplinary exercise. The weird harmonies remind us of whirling dervishes. Amazingly, Adams does not depart from this basic configuration as the movement unfolds. The pulse does not change and the violin leads the dance without ever for a second letting up. However, within these rather stringent limits the soloist deploys a startling sequence of increasingly adventurous and frenzied variations. The movement ends in a stupor of exhaustion, with the shortest of cadenzas. This leads into the second movement, suggestively titled Body through which the dream flows after a poem by Robert Hass. Adams at one point suggested that this image applied to the concerto as a whole: "The orchestra [is treated] as the organized, delicately articulated mass of blood, tissues and bones; the violin as the dream that flows through it." It is a rapt 'space music', in the form of a loose chaconne. The violin sings thoughtfully above a dark orchestral fabric, artfully embroidered with discreet synthesiser lines, woodwind filigree and suggestive percussive details. It's a most delicate mood study, recasting the pastoral bliss of, say, Appalachian Spring into a more exotic and cosmopolitan idiom. The third and final movement is a tongue-in-cheeck departure from the otherworldly atmosphere that held us in thrall. It's a kinetic, brash toccata that connects directly to Adams' fondness for classic Americana and Hollywood enchantments.

Adams' piece strikes a very different posture from the narrative, epic Schuman and Rochberg concertos. Continuity and connection rather than contrast and conflict are the watch words. The omnipresent solo voice gives the piece a very particular, almost prophetic cachet. It's a very significant and distinctive piece. Altogether these three concertos form an impressive American tryptich.

The Nonesuch recording I've listened to is very good. In terms of sound quality, Nonesuch is always on the dry side. So here as elsewhere I'm wishing for more bloom and somewhat more vigorous dynamics. The performance by Gidon Kremer backed up by Nagano and the LSO can be recommended on all accounts. It's superb.

Here's Robert Hass' poem:

You count up everything you have
or have let go.
What’s left is the lost and the possible.
To the lost, the irretrievable
or just out of reach, you say:
light loved the pier, the seedy
string quartet of the sun going down over water
that gilds ants and beach fleas
ecstatic and communal on the stiffened body
of a dead grebe washed ashore
by last night’s storm. Idiot sorrow,
an irregular splendor, is the half sister
of these considerations.
To the possible you say nothing.
October on the planet.
Huge moon, bright stars.