A Flowering Tree

I was very excited to see this CD was finally available, and I jumped on it. I'm happy to say that I'm not disappointed. Adam's writing is both energetic and gorgeous, as ever. An equal to "El Nino", easily. Superior to "Klinghoffer" and (if it even needs to be said) the stumble that "I Was Looking At The Ceiling..." turned out to be. Nothing tops "Nixon", of course, but that opera is stylistically somewhat different from Adam's current style. I have yet to hear "Doctor Atomic" so I can't compare it.

The performance is excellent as well. The singers are well matched to the material and the playing is phenomenal, as is the mix and master of the CD itself.

I have to confirm the booklet issue, but I have to say it doesn't really bother me. I'm not really a follow-the-libretto kind of opera listener. It's in English, anyhow. From a consumer perspective I would hope they would have some sort of mail-in exchange option, though, once they get it sorted out.

If you're a John Adams fan, this is a must-have, in my opinion.

I went to the Nonesuch website, contacted them as indicated on the site, explained the problem, and within a few days received a courteous e-mail apologizing for the misprinted booklet and explaining that they were reprinting the booklet correctly. A few weeks later I reveived the reprinted booklet, free of errors and free of charge. I hope that those who downgraded this release will go to the [...] website and write a courteous request for the reprinted booklet. As for why others got no reply to their complaints, all I can assume is that they did not go directly to the source on the Nonesuch site.

By the way, I think this opera is yet another masterpiece from one of American's finest living composers. Adams is perhaps our finest composer overall, given the variety and depth (both intellectual and emotional) of his works as well as their appeal to the human ears. Certainly the many performances of his works all over the world suggest that he is. Only in the USA are his compositions relatively rarely performed. Now that the MET has finally, after all these years, recognized him with "Dr. Atomic" and plans a production of "Nixon in China", perhaps we will get to hear and see more of his works in concert halls and opera houses.

I highly recommend his recent autobiography,Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life and the informative The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer. Also well done and greatly to be ejoyed are the DVD studies of his life and music, Hail Bop! A Portrait of John Adams and John Adams - A Portrait and a Concert of American Music. Also available and highly recommended are the DVDs of his earlier operas: The Death of Klinghoffer, in a British film version Adams - Death of Klinghoffer / Randle, Sylvan, Howard, Maltman, Boutros, Melrose, Bickley, LSO and El Nino, which is rather a staged oratorio than an opera as such. We are still waiting for a DVD of "Nixon in China" , his first and most performed opera. It is still available on CD: Nixon in China. When we finally get in on DVD, I bet it will come from the Netherlands, Switzerland, or Great Britain.

John Adams and Steve Reich, along with Christopher Rouse and others, have finally overcome the decades long tyranny of the notion that classical music is to be written by academic composers for a coterie of other academic composers rather than for greater audiences, music determined by chance or mathematics, often elegant on the page, even more often ugly to the ear and anxiety producing to the psyche.

For the record, lest I be mistaken for a musical Philistine into classical music "lite" with easy tunes to hum, I think that the 20th Century's great operas include Berg's "Wozzeck" and "Lulu" and Schoenberg's "Moses und Aron." - along with the operas of Janacek, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Britten. And, yes, let's do some humming: "Porgy and Bess" and "Trouble in Tahiti" and "Candide."

In any case, Nonesuch will gladly send you a new booklet with the complete libretto of "A Flowering Tree." Just go to the label's website and request it.

The shimmering beauty of the music, the magical Tamil tale of transformative love vs. adversity, and the exceptional performances all make John Adams' opera/oratorio "A Flowering Tree" one of his best releases yet.

A flood of antipodal cultural references washes through the music. Adams' minimalist upbringing barely shows. To create some tonal exoticism, most of Act I seems to be in a medieval mixolydian mode (a scale sounding like G to G on the piano's white keys). The melodic lines are more emotive, the orchestration more transparent, the style positivistic in evoking the sound of previous composers.

The opening notes are transporting. Taking Wagner's woodbird music accompaniment from Siegfried and pasting on it a low melody in a peculiar doubling, Adams conjures up the Sibelius of the Sixth Symphony. Later, in highly accented, simply phrased, fortissimo choral passages, the shade of Carl Orff Carmina-izes. During the wedding music, slashing strings typical of the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara are heard. At the beginning of Act II, blatantly Wagnerian horn phrases burst out. Yet all these Western and Nordic references are carefully immersed in genetic Adams: No harm, no postmodern foul.

At times in other works, Adams emotive self is so standoffish you want to shake him. Not so here. Along with "My Father Knew Charles Ives," "Nixon in China," and, yes, "Ceiling ... Sky," this is my favorite Adams so far.