John Adams: City Noir, Fearful Symmetries & Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance

Album review

It is not just that conductor Marin Alsop is well suited generally to John Adams' music, with its kinetic rhythms and brassy, vivid style. The two are actually good friends, and she has a deep understanding of his music. This 2024 Naxos release makes one want to hear a complete edition from Alsop and her ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. She deserves credit for drawing out good jazzy brass lines in the opening work, City Noir (2009), something that is still not a given with central European musicians. The slow movement of that work, which, as a whole, evokes Los Angeles in the film noir era, is a remarkably atmospheric piece in Alsop's hands. She does equally well with the more minimalist-oriented Fearful Symmetries (1988) and the final six-minute ride "Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance" (2016, rev. 2020), a work dedicated to Alsop. These works aren't obscure, but they are not completely familiar, and programmers and listeners interested in the representation of cities in music will find it fascinating. Naxos contributes excellent sound from an Austrian Vienna Radio studio, bringing out many small details. A very fine Adams release that made classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2024.

© James Manheim /TiVo