Customer Reviews

Adams: Violin Concerto/Shaker Loops

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If you're checking out this site you are probably already familiar with Adam's music. I was first introduced to Adams with A Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which I had the good fortune to perform in an orchestra. I then bought Fearful Symmetries (primarily because of the cool title) and loved that as well, being a fan already of minimalism through Glass, Reich, and Riley. Adams has really taken his music in directions far away from all of those composers. The violin concerto on this disc is not altogether solid, in my opinion. The first movement does little for me. Adams lays down a beautiful blanket of sound with the orchestra and writes what seems like improvisatory thoughts in the violin part over the top of it. It takes repeated listens to start hearing and recognizing the motifs and appreciating the overarching structure to the movement. The movement just doesn't speak to me. The second movement, on the other hand, is an absolutely beautiful chaconne that to me carries a lot of melancholy and nostalgia on the violin line, but you will hear what you want to. The price of the CD is worth it for this movement alone. The Toccare is a real showpiece, perpetual motion style driving rhythm, that must be a real finger buster. Shaker Loops is more of the real minimalist piece here, and it was composed about 10 to 15 years earlier than the concerto. I love listening to it. It works the best as background music, in my opinion, unless you are going to see it live. Tune in once in a while and you'll hear some really clever harmonic turns underneath all the texture. One of the things that I love about minimalistic music is also how you can get lost in thought listening to the patterns, then suddenly realize everything is completely different in the music and you wonder how it got that way without you noticing it.

I think if John Adams were to read some of the earlier reviews that referred to him as a minimalist and to these pieces as minimalist works, he would hunt down the reviewers at all costs. These pieces do show some influence of the minimalist period, but both pieces are such richly vested with luscious melodies and a strong sense of change that we'd be insane to label them as minimalist.

Kremer, always a consummate musician, provides us with yet another gorgeous recording. Kent Nagano, the conductor, works well with kremer here - the LSO's attack on this piece perfectly parallels Kremer's slicing approach. The piece will swell to points where you'd think the speakers would burst from the intensity, and then drop back down to a quiet, almost sinister set of pizzicati lines.

It's quite a rush. This piece is definitely in the running for one of the great violin concerti of the 20th century

These two works by American composer John Adams, "Violin Concerto" (1993) and "Shaker Loops" (1977, revised 1983) are two of the finest minimalist works I've ever heard. Adams is one of the few minimalist composers that has evolved into something else. He hasn't limited himself strictly to that genre.

The earlier of these two works "Shaker Loops" is the more traditionally minimalist of the two. Even then, it is still breaking away from strict minimalism. The pulsating repetiveness is still there, but there are more lyrical passages that release and provided a much needed rest from the intensity of the hard repetition. Scored for string orchestra, its often hard to imagine that only strings are making these sounds.

The "Violin Concerto" concerto is easily the more mature of the two works. At this point in his career, Adams is definately "post-minimalist" (all these labels mean virtually nothing!) New music advocate Gidon Kremer is the perfect choice as soloist for this piercing, energetic and exciting work. It is a piece often brimming with energy. It is also important that such a major contemporary composer is going back and returning to a very popular and traditional form considering that most modern composers do whatever they see fit by either inventing new forms or abandoning form entirely. The violin almost never stops completely overpowering the orchestra's understated but excellent part. The third movement in particular is quite unlike most violin concertos. Very spiky and fun.

A splendid pair of works by one of today's most famour composers. The violin concerto, especially is worth checking out.

This disc is extraordinary: the orchestral playing is clean and well recorded, and Gidon Kremer executes the solo part with color and precision. Adams's violin concerto is one of his better works. It is very lyrical, rhapsodic. The harmonies are some of his more advanced, and this concerto produces some of the most beautiful sounds that have never been created before.

I think the greatest violin concertos of this century are the one by Stravinsky, Shostakovich's First, Glass' Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and John Adams' Concerto. The second movement is very powerful, a wonderful nightpiece. I've heard it live, conducted by the composer - it was really incredible!

Hard to believe that John Adams' virtuosic and inordinately beautiful VIOLIN CONCERTO is already over ten years old. Works that have followed this important challenge for the composer, works such as 'Naive and Sentimental Music' and 'El Nino', show significant seeds in this work that is rapidly becoming standard repertoire among the fine violinists of today.

Though this initial recording (there will doubtless be many more) is pungent and the playing by Gidon Kremer is remarkably facile, the concerto really comes alive when heard in the concert hall where the interaction (conversation if you will) between the solo violin and the orchestra extends into the audience response. After hearing the elegance and fire of Leila Josefowicz (probably the leading contender for this concerto) with the LA Philharmonic in the acoustic of Disney Hall there were few words to describe how communicative this concerto can be: Josefowicz is less strident and more caressing than Kremer's work on this CD.

Surely some of Adams most romantic music is in the movement Chaconne: Body through which the dream flows. The violin statements or questions find response in the massed strings, in the massed winds, and in the electric keyboards that come as close to transcendental meditation as anything written today.

Kent Nagano provides full-bodied support and his reading of the expanded orchestration of 'Shaker Loops' proves that die-hards who prefer the chamber version should listen again. This is another key recording of the output of one on America's most beloved contemporary composers, and until others (especially Josefowicz) come along, this will be the standard. Grady Harp, November 2004

Post-minimal musical procedures has worked well for Adams, His skill was to introduce substantive musical ideas into the vast bleak world of repetitive musical patterns. And this "Violin Concerto" works well. Like the first movement, the gorgeous accompaniment of the forever ascending patterns is a joy to listen to. Haunting and mesmerizing. The odd dimension here was that I often found myself listening to the orchestral music more than the solo violin. Especially this "First Movement" where to my ears the violin's continuous motion seems overly dissipated, almost throw-away music, no melodic contour added up to much, and there was no real dialogue(if there is suppose to be) between the orchestra and the solo.. Adams adheres to traditional music structures with a middle slow movement. The use of two electric pianos with sampler setting was a stroke of genius. Barely perceptible but enough to colour their orchestral brethren. There is plenty of ethereal music here which is what a violin concerto does, as opposed to any other kind of concerto. No other composer(save Mozart) have ever ventured past one violin concerto,so it is a place reserved for special music ideas,almost spiritual. And Adams here proclaims a new anti-post-minimalist world, perhaps the next reigning musical ideology. The predictable last movement "Toccata" reminds me strongly of Samuel Barber's last movement for his one and only "Violin Concerto". The fast clipped furioso speed here is what any good violin virtuoso needs and Kremer knows few equals. There are stricking syncopation "Fives" against the ongoing rush of four-four pulse whish gives a character here. If you miss Adams the minimalist well "Shaker Loops is here. I can't listen to it past a few minutes. If Adams has a" voice", within the profoundest sense of the term, it is the way he moves imperceptibly within the labyrinth of orchestral sonorities. He remains very much a harmonic composer,but a consummate craftsman of the orchestra. There are no memorable melodies in any of his music, and I consider that a complement, and rhythm? well for any self-respecting post-minimalist is a flattened out affair, merely as a support of the flowing harmonic motion. Again Adams is compelling as an orchestrator.He inherits Stravinsky's orchestral estate.

Adams' Violin Concerto is probably the best work in the genre since the great concerto by Alban Berg or even since Sibelius. The performance by Gidon Kremer and Kent Nagano is definitive. This piece grows more beautiful every time I listen to it.

I don't like to take up much space with negative music reviews, but from time to time I feel the urge to let readers know that although I often advocate "classical" music by contemporary composers, I am not necessarily a sucker for every new orchestral piece that comes along. I was really excited to see that a violin concerto by John Adams has been recorded by no less a luminary than Gidon Kremer, but no matter how many times I listen to this work, I find it a wholly unrewarding experience. Shaker Loops is better, but has already been recorded in several versions, so there is nothing about this disk that truly merits a recommendation.

This is Adams at his worst.He can be flash(as in Faast Ride,loopalooza etc) but at least those pieces sound like good film music at best.
The Violin concerto to me actually does'nt sound at all like Adams!! I am really surprised people who like Harmonium(his best piece by far) like this.It is actually very unpleasant to listen to.
It is relentless(why does'nt Adams like rests?!!), tedious and actually plain dull and uninspired.There appears to be NO direction in the first movement,just like a boring inmprovisation.And yes I have tried to hear it quite a few times.
The second movement is the best but sounds a bit like bad Frank Martin(a wonderful Swiss composer who mixed atonality and tonlity with much success)I advise readers to listen to Martin;s 'Petite Concertante'.Adams is just not good at trying to incoprporate atonal elements with tonal ones-he also just sounds like bad Ives here.
The last movement is typical of Adams-very flash technically but no substance.It is again relentless but just plain tedious,empty and machine music.It is reminiscent of the Barber but that at least DOES have depth even though I am not a big fan of that (though Adams could learn from Barber's first movement which is lovely,breathes and has rests!!).
This is all a shame as Adams in Harmonium showed he could write music that breathed and was really musical.