John Adams : Shaker Loops

Album review

Like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, John Adams has developed minimalism into a more expressive and versatile language than it promised in the 1970s, when pattern music was at its height but also at its most rigorous and severe. Judging from the works on this 2004 Naxos release, Adams has progressed from the limitations of static repetition, staggered loops, and strict additive cycles to a much freer and personal style; his music sometimes features identifiable minimalist techniques but is more often dominated by an emotional lyricism and nostalgia that tend strongly toward neo-Romanticism. Adams' earlier interests are quite apparent in the energetic flurries of Shaker Loops (1978, revised in 1983) and the exciting rhythmic propulsion of Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986); yet through their colorful orchestration and comparatively free use of ostinati, both works seem worlds away from the hard-edged sounds or restricted parameters of hardcore minimalism. The dark, evocative setting of Walt Whitman's poem "The Wound-Dresser" (1988) and the mysterious "Berceuse élégiaque" (1991) are even more liberated from minimalist constraints, and seem rather more influenced by Copland than either Glass or Reich. Baritone Nathan Gunn and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, directed by Marin Alsop, serve Adams well on this intelligently programmed album, and Naxos provides fine sound.
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