The John Adams Album

Album review

Over the past three years, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (a huge contributor to the Decca label since Charles Dutoit’s lead from 1977-2002) and Kent Nagano have been making an exciting series of recordings, focusing on rare works, namely Honegger-Ibert’s L’Aiglon and Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place. Today, they continue their recording journey on American terrain, with a retrospective entirely dedicated to John Adams. They had left for unknown territory with Bernstein and now they return to town to celebrate one of the popes of minimalism. While Harmonielehre, a vast triptych composed in 1985 (a humble tribute to the early 20th century with perceptible influences from Wagner, Schönberg, Sibelius and Ravel) and the exciting fanfare Short Ride in a Fast Machine composed for orchestra in 1986 have been superbly championed by Sir Simon Rattle (EMI, Birmingham, 1993) as well as Michael Tilson Thomas (San Francisco, 2010-2011), few have recorded Common Tones in Simple Time (the composer’s first work for a large orchestra written in 1979) since Edo de Waart’s recording for Nonesuch in November 1986 at Davies Symphony Hall. The piece recalls Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Kent Nagano’s fluid and gentle touch is perfectly suited to this absolutely fascinating score. Throughout the other works in the programme the American conductor is consistent with his own rather “pointillist” style. In fact, Adams is almost like a modern transcription of Seurat’s paintings. This great clarity in the harmonic superimpositions also reveals the clear influence of Berg and Webern in The Anfortas Wound and allows for new balances in the incipit of the final part of Harmonielehre (Meister Eckhardt and Quackie), one of John Adams’ most striking scores, especially since the tempos and rhythms remain measured here (unlike Michael Tilson Thomas’s interpretation), giving a stirring new version of an unmissable major work. However, the greatest highlight of this anthology is still Common Tones in Simple Time, which almost sounds like a sonic representation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz