Customer Reviews

John Adams: Century Rolls

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Let me say that any fan of modern piano concertos or of John Adams MUST have this disc. You owe it to yourself to hear the piano concerto entitled Century Rolls. I have ben familiar with this piece for almost two years. I have heard live concerts and have several taped performances.

The live performances that I attended remain most vividly in my memory in that you have to be in the space in which the piece is being played in order to hear all the dramatic and subtle effects. I have three taped perfromances all with Ax at the piano and with Adams, Eschenbach, and Tilson Thomas conducting. I have heard it live with David Robertson and Dohnanyi conducting. Though the emphasis is on the extensive workout the pianist has to give, it is also a virtuosic tour-de-force for the conductor to bring off.

The first movement lasts over 14 minutes and the pianist plays for almost all of the time. This movement is the most varied in terms of sound quantity. The movement begins with woodwind chirping and eventually reaches sudden and dramatic outbursts from the orchestra. The second movement can compare with Ravel's second movement of his G major concerto in terms of limpid and loving sound. It casts the same spell and never lets go. The beginning of the movement has the resonance of the ending of the first movement lingering in the air. The third movement is a rollercoaster of a ride from beginning to end and ,again, resembles the third movement of the Ravel concerto.

I have always loved Adams' music from the first time I heard Harmonium almost 20 years ago. I equally enjoy Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops (the orchestral version) and the Violin Concerto.

Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra are not the ideal pairing I would have hoped for in this piece. I would have preferred Slatkin and St. Louis or Tilson Thomas and San Francisco. The Clevelend Orchestra plays gorgeously and Dohnanyi is the virtuoso conductor necessary for the piece, but there is a lack of abandonment and exhiliration missing.

Only a digital recording on a cd could do this piece justice because of all the subtle effects and sudden dramatic outbursts. Play this piece at the loudest setting you can without breaking your walls or your lease.

I gave this recording five stars because at last we have a recording of Century Rolls, and a superior one at that.

As much as I love Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, etc. I still cannot help but yearn for modern composers who are inspired by modern sounds, human experiences and emotions as the foundations for creating acoustic orchestral music. For me John Adams is one of the few who is successfully doing just this. I don't believe he's doing anything different than composers like Dvorak, Bartok, and Kodaly over one hundred years ago who based much of their works on ethnic popular folk music. Western music has a such a tremendous legacy, I'm glad to see it being advanced by Adams's genius. All three pieces, Century Rolls, Lollapalooza, and Slonimsky's Earbox I find fun and intriguing to listen to. May be they do not take me to the heavens like Mozart's 41st or Beethoven's 5th, but they nonetheless deserve careful attention before being dismissed as reactionary.

I was making a nearly blind guess when I bought this CD; I had made my decision based solely on the audio exerpts from Amazon.
But it was well worth the risk.

The CD contains an engaging 50 or so minutes of John Adams' finest, apart from Short Ride in a Fast Machine, my favourite of his. I am in to contemporary classical and I am glad I have this CD. The fluid and smooth tinkerings of Manny's Gym, the envigorating jazz powering Lollapalooza and the surprising jabs strewn throughout Hail Bop is just some of the great stuff on this CD you'll find. So if you are unsure about buying this recording, you will probably really enjoy it, especially if you are familiar with John Adams or other contemporary music.

John Adams is popular not only with musicians who flock to him for commissions but also with audiences, who despite the intellectual participation required to delve deeply into the music of Adams' creations, greet him with standing ovations. This recording includes a piano concerto created for Emmanuel Ax, 'Century Rolls', which is as challenging yet engaging a work for piano and orchestra as any recent such compositions. Ax enormous talent makes this piece sound utterly effortless.

It is such commissions as the 'The Dharma of Big Sur' premiered in 2003 by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Philharmonic with electric violinist Tracy Silverman that keep Adams' popularity alive. At a recent performance in Disney Hall with the same participants as for the premiere the audience not only understood the complex, richly colored score which demonstrates Adams' increasingly sophisticated and expanded palette, they accepted the aspect of an amplified electric violin as not just an instrument from the realm of 'pop culture' but as an expressive, completely different aspect of classical music. One only hopes that this work will soon be recorded as it is one of Adams' more complex and cerebral pieces.

Until that recording is made, this wonderful concerto, coupled with 'Lollapalooza' and 'Slonimsky's Earbox' for orchestra alone, will certainly be a fine introduction to the wonders Adams creates in the concerto realm. Grady Harp, May 05

Wow, what can I say?! This release has totally floored me on several occasions and its power remains. John Adams is one of those composers who uses all different styles and combines them into one that is uniquely his. In this music there are traces of Glass, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Williams (both Vaughn and John), Holst and more. But seriously although this work is titled Century Rolls that is not its highlight. Rather the jewel of this recording is Slonimsky's Earbox. This is simply one of the most awe-inspring pieces ever. The passage from 11:30 to 12:30 is one of the most exhilarating and moving passages in the history of recorded music. Lollapolooza and the title piece are also good but get this recording for Slonimsky.

I'm a huge fan of John Adams, so don't take my following criticisms to apply to all of his work, but I find the particular works on this album kind of gimmicky and shallow. It's true that they're all rich in rhythm and orchestration, and the performance is excellent, but whenever I've listened to this disk I always got the impression that these works didn't have anything to say, that they were all flash and no substance.

A particular case in point is the piano concerto "Century Rolls." Adams wanted the pianist to sound like an automated player piano; I'm not sure what the benefit is. The one cool thing about real player pianos is that they can play music that humans aren't physically capable of playing, but their disadvantage is that they have a uniform, flat timbre. Since Adams' piece is for a living pianist rather than a player piano, the effect is that the work has none of the benefit of a player piano and all of its disadvantage. And beyond that, the music doesn't seem to carry any greater meaning beyond its gimmicky purpose.

reminds me much of ravel's concerto in g. and gershwin's rhapsody in blue. john adams cites fats waller as another influence for the title piece, i'll have to give it a closer listen. satie's influence is clear in the second movement, manny's gym.

that composers have commissioned pieces for emanuel ax, speaks highly of his gifts, here and elsewhere.

lollapalooza, not to be confused with appaloosa, is a spirited quirky gait.

and slonimsky's earbox is adams' debt to the thesaurus of scales and melodic patterns by nicholas slonimsky and 'memorializes his wit and hyperenergetic personality.'

My classical CD's are, like many of yours, alphabetized on my CD rack, and the A - B section probably takes up 20% of the total rack space. This is, of course, partially because Bach, Beethoven and Bernstein all begin with "B." This is also due to the fact that I own more John Adams recordings than any of the above. I'm a John Adams fan.

I've had the privilege of seeing John Adams both conduct and lecture on his own works, and two things are immediately evident when you hear Adams speak...

1) This guy has a brain the size of a Volkswagen, and

2) This guy has a great sense of humor.

Both of these qualities are laid bare for the listener in this recording. Century Rolls is a 3-movement piano concerto indicative of Adams' earlier minimalist style. It's a well-written piece to begin with, and with Emmanuel Ax performing, the recording is downright stunning. Lollapalooza (which may be my new favorite Adams work) is a tight little orchestral work that, as the title suggests, seems to swirl around a few rhythmic motives. Slonimsky's Earbox surprised me quite a bit on the first hearing; it's big, it's violent, it's colorful... all qualities I've come to expect in many of Adams' minimalist works, but this piece is in no way minimalist.

If you're new to John Adams, this disc, along with San Francisco's "The Chairman Dances," is a great place to start your collection. Not really a fan of minimalism? Me neither, but then again, as I look over my John Adams collection, only a small percentage of the pieces represented could actually be described as true minimalism.

Much speaks in favour of John Adams being the greatest living classical composer, which is though far from saying that he is actually great. His output for piano is sparse, though including the important quasi-masterpiece Phrygian Gates--indeed, one of the major works written for the instrument since Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux and Barber's Sonata.

I will try to put things into perspective: Together with Medtner's Third, Shostakovich's Second, and Poulenc's and Barber's Piano Concertos, Adams's Century Rolls is the greatest work for piano and orchestra written since Rachmaninov's landmark Paganini Rhapsody. On the other hand, one could argue there is limited competition--many have tried but utterly few have managed to create something truly memorable since the days of the great late-Romantic warhorses. But that is just why Adams's achievement should be anything but underestimated. Even if Mr Ax still has a monopoly on recorded versions, his playing is likely to more than hold its own with future versions, and so is the Cleveland support under von Dohnányi.

So, why only four stars? Well, the problem lies with the couplings, which are far from outstanding. My praise for Lollapalooza is considerably lower than that of many other reviewers; it is of some interest, though not for repeated listening. Slonimsky's Earbox indeed gives some pleasure, for the moment, though I would be deadly surprised hearing someone humming its tunes. Nagano's conducting thankfully does add some excitement.

Throughout, the recorded sound is excellent with a great deal of brilliance and impact. Overall, I would this disc is recommendable--not for the couplings but for the 'greatest' Piano Concerto written by a living composer.

Up front I'll admit to being predisposed to enjoy John Adams' work. I have been hooked on his compositions from the first time that I heard one. I eagerly await new ones and snatch up recordings of them as soon as they appear. I have yet to be disappointed. To the contrary, each new work is more
remarkable than its predecessors. His piano concerto, "Century Rolls," featured on this disk, is proof that the talented Mr. Adams continually outdoes himself. Words can adequately describe neither how wonderfully engaging and addictive this concerto is, nor how one theme, even one note, seems to flow ineluctably from another. Like Mikey's cereal, just try it, you'll like it.