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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
First off it should be noted that whilst this album is spread over two CDs, it's total playing time is only 53:28. Why an album that would be short placed on one disc is spread over two I have no idea. Gimmick? An attempt to mislead people as to the playing time (significantly not indicated on outside jacket)? Obviously protecting the environment is not of concern to John Adams or Nonesuch.
On the other hand the music is very, very good. Both works are essentially tone poems dealing with landscapes. A wonderful balance between atmospherics and virtuosity is maintained throughout. The two soloists perform their very different roles with grace and a wonderful sense of time and place. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is ably led by the composer.
This is a fine album despite the decision to present it as two EPs rather than one album.
On the other hand the music is very, very good. Both works are essentially tone poems dealing with landscapes. A wonderful balance between atmospherics and virtuosity is maintained throughout. The two soloists perform their very different roles with grace and a wonderful sense of time and place. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is ably led by the composer.
This is a fine album despite the decision to present it as two EPs rather than one album.
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Those who know John Adams mainly for his cheerful melodies and humoristic details (think of the funny banjo tunes in "Gnarly Buttons") will be surprised by his more serious side while listening to his latest recording. The Darma at Big Sur (2003) is a reference to Big Sur, a region in the coast of California with high mountains and deep precipices. The piece is an attempt at expressing through music the overwhelming emotion one feels when setting foot for the first time on the west coast of America. This happened to a young Adams himself, when he fled to California from the oppressing musical institution where serial music was very much in the air. A six-string electric violin, played by Tracy Silverman, is the medium. The piece builds up beautifully, starts at a whistling quiet tone with a dazed violin that, as the piece progresses, very gradually finds its own strong voice. My Father Knew Charles Ives (2003) is an hommage to America's first great serious music composer, Charles Ives (died 1954). The piece starts out very dark, with sinister violins and dark trumpet sounds, then transforms into a bombastic march (march music had a great influence on Ives' music) to end at a sombre note. This cd confims that John Adams is probably the greatest composer of our time.
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14 reviews
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
2 great works, but 2 discs?
8 Oct 2006
Format:Audio CD
I have to say I was getting worried that John Adams was becoming a has-been. El Nino's first half was much better than the second, I didn't particularly like Transmigration and I defy anyone to listen to his 2001 piano work American Berserk and tell me it's any good. But after this release, I stand humbly corrected -- he's still, in my opinion, America's, if not the world's, best living composer.
Dharma at Big Sur is scored for an electric violin and orchestra and uses a tuning system that's not well-tempered. What really makes this work special is the way the electric violinist plays soulfully and beautifully above the orchestra for almost the entire work in a sliding style I've never heard before in classical music. The first movement "A New Day" with its quiet and contemplative opening really feels like it's the creation of an entire universe. The climax of the second movement might be the most satisfying conclusion to any of Adams's works to date. Dharma is an absolute masterpiece.
My Father Knew Charles Ives is wonderful too, even if it's not as powerful or moving as Dharma. The work is both an homage to Ives and a reflection of Adams' life. Clearly, Adams had a great childhood. The first movement, Concord, is playful -- the clearest tribute to Ives, since it's sounds structurarlly similar to his Fourth of July. The chaos in Adams' Concord is a little more rigid than Ives', but it's still fun. The second movement, "The Lake", features a beautiful clarinet line that evokes the composer's father. The scurrying of the last movement, "The Mountain", seems needlessly frenetic at times, but the cathartic ending that results of it makes the voyage worth it.
My one bone to pick is with Nonesuch. The two works together represent about 52 minutes worth of music -- an amount that many would already consider stingy on a single CD, especially when other works like Guide to Strange Places go unrecorded. So why put these two works on 2 CDs? Is it to justify the $20 sticker price? An artistic statement to completely separate the two works? It just seems silly. But it's also forming a nasty pattern of sub-30 minute CDs that really should stop. People want to hear the astonishing sound world that Adams creates -- why try to limit it to 25 minutes at a time?
Buy this disc, even if it's split into 2 pieces. It's the best of his works yet!
Dharma at Big Sur is scored for an electric violin and orchestra and uses a tuning system that's not well-tempered. What really makes this work special is the way the electric violinist plays soulfully and beautifully above the orchestra for almost the entire work in a sliding style I've never heard before in classical music. The first movement "A New Day" with its quiet and contemplative opening really feels like it's the creation of an entire universe. The climax of the second movement might be the most satisfying conclusion to any of Adams's works to date. Dharma is an absolute masterpiece.
My Father Knew Charles Ives is wonderful too, even if it's not as powerful or moving as Dharma. The work is both an homage to Ives and a reflection of Adams' life. Clearly, Adams had a great childhood. The first movement, Concord, is playful -- the clearest tribute to Ives, since it's sounds structurarlly similar to his Fourth of July. The chaos in Adams' Concord is a little more rigid than Ives', but it's still fun. The second movement, "The Lake", features a beautiful clarinet line that evokes the composer's father. The scurrying of the last movement, "The Mountain", seems needlessly frenetic at times, but the cathartic ending that results of it makes the voyage worth it.
My one bone to pick is with Nonesuch. The two works together represent about 52 minutes worth of music -- an amount that many would already consider stingy on a single CD, especially when other works like Guide to Strange Places go unrecorded. So why put these two works on 2 CDs? Is it to justify the $20 sticker price? An artistic statement to completely separate the two works? It just seems silly. But it's also forming a nasty pattern of sub-30 minute CDs that really should stop. People want to hear the astonishing sound world that Adams creates -- why try to limit it to 25 minutes at a time?
Buy this disc, even if it's split into 2 pieces. It's the best of his works yet!
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
New tricks from the old dog...
20 Nov 2006
Format:Audio CD
The music of John Adams has always been both distinctively personal and at the same time evocative of numerous other kinds of music. In that regard, it's Post-Modern in the best sense of the word: able to combine old things in new and provocative ways. If there were echos of 1940s Big Bands in Adams' "Fearful Symmetries," and a near-quote from Stravinsky's "Song of the Nightingale" in Adams' "Slonimsky's Earbox," then this new double CD is a continuation of that trend. The source for Adams' collage technique is clearly Charles Ives: what made "The Transmigration of Souls" into such a beautiful piece is the use of Ivesian techniques of collage to create a deeply American music of profound emotional impact. So "My Father Knew Charles Ives" is the latest manifestation. I would caution buyers who don't know Ives' "Three Places in New England" that you almost need to know that work before you hear Adams' piece to understand how fully Adams has modeled his music on Ives. The Dharma at Big Sur is a double homage as well. The first movement is inspired by Lou Harrison (who was my teacher) and the second movement by Terry Riley (who's a friend), so it was interesting to hear how Adams managed to be himself while evoking the work of two other composers. My only quibble with this beautiful sounding and looking disk is the wastefulness of issuing it on two CDs. Even if Nonesuch only makes you pay the price of a single CD, the two works together are barely an hour long, and it just seems a little over the top to put each work on its own CD. But hey, I guess if they were issuing MY music that way, it wouldn't seem overdone.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Gorgeous and Accomplished
16 Nov 2006
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
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