Adams: City Noir; Fearful Symmetries; "Lola Does the Spider Dance" (from Girls of the Golden West). Marin Alsop, conductor; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Naxos 8.559935. ISBN: 636943993521.
My mixed feelings about John Adams's music are exemplified by the offerings on this recording. I'm mostly cold or indifferent to much of his more recent work, while I'm a moderate fan of his earlier, non-operatic stuff. (China Gates, Shaker Loops, The Chairman Dances [by themselves], Grand Pianola Music, and Short Ride in a Fast Machine are my favorites.) Adams's star for the most part shone at its brightest during the late 70s, the 80s, and some of the 90s. Like Schumann and a few others, he peaked early. As with almost every composer, he's at his best when his popular impulse constrains his intellectual pretensions. For Adams, this means finding ways to appeal through timbre, sonority, and driving rhythm...because he mostly lacks fellow "minimalist" Philip Glass's winning melodic gift. (Readers of this blog will soon discover that I am both a melody man and an unrepentant middlebrow listener.)
Fearful Symmetries dates from the 80s and is to my sensibility one of Adams's most compelling works. Almost its whole half-hour span features a driving boogie pulse (which sounds a lot like the one in The Chairman Dances) that goes through various figurations of small ideas. The considerable harmonic and timbral territory traversed with a near-constant beat gives the piece its interest. It's a compelling journey, and Marin Alsop satisfyingly elicits propulsion and bright colors from her ensemble. I have no qualms about recommending this rendition over Adams's own (Nonesuch 0349709906).
I'm much less impressed with the other works, as sympathetically as Alsop and Company perform them. The indicated dance from the opera Girls of the Golden West is mercifully short; I forgot it instantly after first listening to it. Repeated listens have likewise left no other impression than the music being tedious. City Noir (2009) is a bit of a mixed bag. The description of it at Presto Music is succinct: "City Noir was inspired by the cultural and social history of Los Angeles, with Adams calling it ‘an imaginary film score’ in its evocation of a terse, melodramatic and menace-drenched sound world." It consists of three movements: "The City and its Double," "The Song is For You," and "Boulevard Night." The work strengthens as it progresses, but never rises above being mildly engaging. The first movement is just noisy and boring, with nothing memorable poking through a bunch of dissonant hot air. We then come to a calmer stretch featuring, among other things, disembodied evocations of jazz. This was mildly amusing but felt gimmicky. With the finale we finally encounter some proper lyricism and driving rhythms in its evocations of movie music. The work ends with a rousing finish of kaleidoscopic orchestral timbres. I'd revisit this last movement some time, but I really have no use for the first two. I guess you can listen and decide for yourself.
Recommended for Fearful Symmetries and the finale of City Noir
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