Customer Reviews

John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have to say I was getting worried that John Adams was becoming a has-been. El Nino's first half was much better than the second, I didn't particularly like Transmigration and I defy anyone to listen to his 2001 piano work American Berserk and tell me it's any good. But after this release, I stand humbly corrected -- he's still, in my opinion, America's, if not the world's, best living composer.

Dharma at Big Sur is scored for an electric violin and orchestra and uses a tuning system that's not well-tempered. What really makes this work special is the way the electric violinist plays soulfully and beautifully above the orchestra for almost the entire work in a sliding style I've never heard before in classical music. The first movement "A New Day" with its quiet and contemplative opening really feels like it's the creation of an entire universe. The climax of the second movement might be the most satisfying conclusion to any of Adams's works to date. Dharma is an absolute masterpiece.

My Father Knew Charles Ives is wonderful too, even if it's not as powerful or moving as Dharma. The work is both an homage to Ives and a reflection of Adams' life. Clearly, Adams had a great childhood. The first movement, Concord, is playful -- the clearest tribute to Ives, since it's sounds structurarlly similar to his Fourth of July. The chaos in Adams' Concord is a little more rigid than Ives', but it's still fun. The second movement, "The Lake", features a beautiful clarinet line that evokes the composer's father. The scurrying of the last movement, "The Mountain", seems needlessly frenetic at times, but the cathartic ending that results of it makes the voyage worth it.

My one bone to pick is with Nonesuch. The two works together represent about 52 minutes worth of music -- an amount that many would already consider stingy on a single CD, especially when other works like Guide to Strange Places go unrecorded. So why put these two works on 2 CDs? Is it to justify the $20 sticker price? An artistic statement to completely separate the two works? It just seems silly. But it's also forming a nasty pattern of sub-30 minute CDs that really should stop. People want to hear the astonishing sound world that Adams creates -- why try to limit it to 25 minutes at a time?

Buy this disc, even if it's split into 2 pieces. It's the best of his works yet!

The music of John Adams has always been both distinctively personal and at the same time evocative of numerous other kinds of music. In that regard, it's Post-Modern in the best sense of the word: able to combine old things in new and provocative ways. If there were echos of 1940s Big Bands in Adams' "Fearful Symmetries," and a near-quote from Stravinsky's "Song of the Nightingale" in Adams' "Slonimsky's Earbox," then this new double CD is a continuation of that trend. The source for Adams' collage technique is clearly Charles Ives: what made "The Transmigration of Souls" into such a beautiful piece is the use of Ivesian techniques of collage to create a deeply American music of profound emotional impact. So "My Father Knew Charles Ives" is the latest manifestation. I would caution buyers who don't know Ives' "Three Places in New England" that you almost need to know that work before you hear Adams' piece to understand how fully Adams has modeled his music on Ives. The Dharma at Big Sur is a double homage as well. The first movement is inspired by Lou Harrison (who was my teacher) and the second movement by Terry Riley (who's a friend), so it was interesting to hear how Adams managed to be himself while evoking the work of two other composers. My only quibble with this beautiful sounding and looking disk is the wastefulness of issuing it on two CDs. Even if Nonesuch only makes you pay the price of a single CD, the two works together are barely an hour long, and it just seems a little over the top to put each work on its own CD. But hey, I guess if they were issuing MY music that way, it wouldn't seem overdone.

More evidence that John Adams is one of the world's greatest living composers. Both works are full of the beauty and complexity that we have come to hope for from the composer of Nixon in China, Harmonielehre, and Century Rolls. The Ives piece is possibly the most brilliant imitation of another composer I have ever heard. Highly recommended to any serious music lover.

this is for the fisrt disc 'Dharma at Big Sur' i have not even listened to the second disc as of yet.

I've been waiting since i heard a rebroadcast of the L.A.premiere (2003) shortly after the actual live premiere and have been impatiently awaiting this release. That's about 3 years and i felt every frickin second of it!

I was driving to work the night it was being rebroadcast and I was just overwhelmed, not by the idea of an electric violin because to me that's really not that 'out there' but yet i was overpowered with emotions of excitemnt and a sort of 'awakening.' My eyes actually widened as the performance continued until i reached my work and i just sat there in my car listening, not wanting to leave any amount of the piece unlistened to. I eventually started work that night being about 20 min late but i just didn't care.

Let me tell you i bugged my local classical radio station who actually did the rebroadcast if they could give me a copy or something. I Bugged nonesuch records. I tried having it played on request nights so that i could record it on my computer. Finally three years later i get an email from nonesuch and i shortly thereafter purchase this amazing piece of work.

Looking back at all my reactions and after reading the booklet inside the cd case, I find myself amazed that all of those feelings from first eye opening discoverey and overwhelming emotion then agonzing wait to 'achieve' (in my case get the music again) and giving in to the wait and to a final fierce almost angry capturing of what you longed to have again after a very long journey, were all part of what John Adams tried to capture.

who'd of thought buying a cd could be so gratifying? Definately worth the 20 bucks.

"The Dharma at Big Sur," a concerto for electric violin and orchestra, features the kind of post-minimalist style typical of John Adams' works, but is one of his more harmonically adventurous. The overall feel of the work is calm, but as it progresses in the second movement the dance-like revelries of the violin fly above an orchestral pulse and humming sonoroties that gradually intensify so much that by the end I'm always left breathless. This piece has turned out to be among my favorites of Adams' works.

"My Father Knew Charles Ives" is a piece that makes a good companion of Ives' "Three Places in New England." Adams pays homage to Ives, using inter alia Ives' technique of clashing melodies and the sounds of bands, but he also manages to take the work in his own direction. Compared to "Dharma," this is relatively darker and more introspective, with moments of its own intensity surrounded by quieter ruminations.

after listening to the dharma, inspired by jack kerouac's late writings, i had a look at my copy of adams' on the transmigration of souls for the compositional dates, the two pieces having much in common as to stand as companion pieces. which is to say there is a deepening of a style at play in adams' work.

the second recording, my father knew charles ives, owes much to ives, particularly the musical tension, adams, like ives, never lets the listener forget that marching band music on celebrated holidays is in memory of men and women who fought in wars.

the oceanic feeling, something vast and awesome and grand, feelings experienced in response to a tragedy or intense beauty. adams is challenged by some big questions to which he provides musical answers the best that he can.

his linear notes on his influences are worth reading, too.

I'm a pianist and i find The Dharma at Big Sur to be one of the most beautiful pieces i've ever heard. The Ives piece is good, but i'm not too crazy about it.

I was fortunate enough to attend a live performance of "Dharma" at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2005, a little less than 2 years after it's first performance. It is a thrilling experience to see and hear this work live. There was an electricity in the air throughout the entire performance. Anyone who has the opportunity to attend a concert of this music should not miss it. But the good news is that for everyone who can't make it to a concert this recording does the piece justice (as much is possible for a CD).

While live classical music (with all of it's fine nuances and atmosphere) can't easily be canned for recording, this studio recording of Dharma maintains all the sonic quality possible for the medium. I expect that one reason for the delay in this CD release was mix & mastering quality control. The sound of the electric violin is right where it needs to be -- usually on top of the mix (or just even with the rest) but never obscuring the rest of the orchestra. I would love to hear a multichannel and high resolution mix of Dharma. SACD or DVD-Audio anybody?

For those who enjoyed Dharma, I would recomend John Adams' Common Tones in Simple Time for Orchestra and Harmonielehre for Orchestra. The magic is alive, and it's purveyor is John Adams, with the talent of Tracy Silverman and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

This John Adams CD is a great addition to my expanded 20th century collection. I am an avid listener of late 19th century and early 20th century and only occassionally move into the middle and latter part of the 20th. John Adams stretches my listening and brings a fresh perspective. I particularly enjoyed the Dharma at Big Sur portions. This recording is interesting music performed and recorded with great sonority and beauty.

John Adams revels in being an American composer, and the two works presented here are each tributes to American mavericks.

"The Dharma at Big Sur" is a concerto for electric violin and orchestra. The first movement, "A New Day," is dedicated to West Coast composer Lou Harrison, a pioneer of just intonation. The second movement is dedicated to Terry Riley, of "In C" fame, another California pioneer who helped birth (for better or worse) the minimalist movement. "Dharma" is a lovely piece, performed here by Tracy Silverman and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Adams himself conducting. The first movement is slow and meditative, and the second movement speeds up, becoming more ecstatic and altogether more Rileyesque. This work is the reason I sought out this disc, partly because of the subject matter (Adams discusses the Buddhism of Kerouac and the Beats in the liner notes, though he does not mention the Beat and Zen poet Gary Snyder, and Riley is a devotee of the Indian teacher Pandit Pran Nath), and partly because I love the violin.

"My Father Knew Charles Ives" is an orchestral work, clearly modeled on Ives's "Three Places in New England," and with a section in the first movement much like the marching band cacophony of the second movement of Ives's splendid "Symphony No. 4." The work was commissioned by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra -- MTT is, of course, well-known for his championing of Ives. The second movement, "The Lake," is a nocturne, and the third movement, "The Mountain," concludes energetically with a surging passage that according to Adams represents the final ascent to a peak in the Sierra Nevadas.

The performances by the BBCSO are superb, as is the Nonesuch art. I question placing these less-than-30-minute works on their own discs, but other than that the packaging is excellent. A note to Amazon -- the Edward Weston photo from 1931, "Shell and Rock Arrangement," makes a much better cover than the photo of Adams's father & fellow players. My overall opinion of the over-rated Adams has not changed, but these are pleasing pieces, especially "The Dharma at Big Sur."