John Adams - Doctor Atomic Symphony - Nonesuch: 7559799328 - download

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David Robertson's sure guidance encourages the St Louis SO through performances that are as powerful as they are agile. — BBC Music Magazine, September 2009, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 27th Jul 2009
Catalogue No: 7559799328
Label: Nonesuch
Length: 46 minutes

Adams, J: Doctor Atomic Symphony

Work length24:14

Album only

John Adams, Lisa Chong (violin), Lorraine Glass-Harris (violin), Ling Ling Guan (violin), Linda Phipps (clarinet), Leonid Gotman (viola), Lynn Hague (viola), Margot Schwartz (violin), Michael Sanders (tuba), Michael Walk (trumpet), Melissa Brooks (viola), Mark Sparks (flute), Lawrence Strieby (horn), Manuel Ramos (violin), Kristin Ahlstrom (violin), Jonathan Reycraft (trombone), Jonathan Vinocour (viola), Jonathan Chu (violin), John Zirbel (horn), John Macfarlane (violin), Joo Kim (violin), Joshua Maccluer (trumpet), Ken Kulosa (viola), Kathleen Mattis (viola), Karin Ursin (piccolo), Justin Berrie (flute), Mike Chen (viola), Morris Jacob (viola), Takaoki Sugitani (violin), Thomas Drake (trumpet), Susan Slaughter (trumpet), Susan Gordon (viola), Thomas Stubbs (percussion), Thomas Stubbs (timpani), Warren Goldberg (double bass), Wendy Plank Rosen (violin), Tod Bowermaster (horn), Tina Ward (clarinet), Timothy Myers (trombone), Stephen Lange (trombone), Silvian Iticovici (violin), Philip Ross (oboe), Rebeccaxer Hall (violin), Peter Henderson (keyboards), Peter Bowman (oboe), Nicolae Bica (violin), Richard Brewer (viola), Richard Holmes (timpani), Scott Andrews (clarinet), Shannon Farrell Williams (viola), Sarah Hogan (double bass), Ronald Moberly (double bass), Robert Silverman (viola), John Kasica (percussion), Jessica Valeri (horn), Catherine Lehr (viola), Charlene Clark (violin), Carolyn White (double bass), Carolyn Banham (oboe), Carolyn Banham (horn), Christian Woehr (viola), Christopher Carson (double bass), David DeRiso (double bass), David Halen (violin), Darwyn Apple (violin), Daniel Lee (viola), Dana Edson Myers (violin), Bryan Florence (viola), Bradford Buckley (contra-bassoon), Andrea Kaplan (flute), Andrew Gott (bassoon), Alvin McCall (viola), Alison Harney (violin), Alan Schilling (percussion), Angie Smart (violin), Anne Fagerburg (viola), Bradford Buckley (bassoon), Bjorn Ranheim (viola), Barbara Orland (oboe), Asako Kuboki (violin), David Kim (viola), Henry Claude (percussion), Hiroko Yoshida (violin), Heidi Harris (violin), Haruka Watanabe (violin), Gregory Roosa (horn), James Czyzewski (viola), James Meyer (clarinet), Jane Price (violin), Jennifer Nitchman (flute), Jan Gippo (piccolo), Jan Gippo (flute), James Wehrman (horn), Gerard Pagano (trombone), Gerald Fleminger (viola), Elizabeth Dziekonski (violin), Emily Ho (violin), Donald Martin (double bass), Diana Haskell (clarinet), Deborah Bloom (violin), Erik Harris (double bass), Erin Schreiber (violin), George Berry (bassoon), Frances Tietov (harp), Felicia Foland (bassoon), Eva Kozma (violin), Jenny Lind Jones (violin)
David Robertson

I. The Laboratory

Track length2:32

$1.00

$1.30

II. Panic

Track length14:31

Album only

III. Trinity

Track length7:11

$1.00

$1.30

Adams, J: Guide to Strange Places

Work length22:40

Album only

John Adams, Mark Sparks (flute), Melissa Brooks (viola), Manuel Ramos (violin), Lynn Hague (viola), Lorraine Glass-Harris (violin), Michael Sanders (tuba), Michael Walk (trumpet), Peter Bowman (oboe), Nicolae Bica (violin), Morris Jacob (viola), Mike Chen (viola), Lisa Chong (violin), Linda Toote (piccolo), Joshua Maccluer (trumpet), Kathleen Mattis (viola), Joo Kim (violin), Jonathan Vinocour (viola), Jonathan Reycraft (trombone), Kristin Ahlstrom (violin), Kyle Lombard (violin), Peter Henderson (keyboards), Linda Phipps (clarinet), Leonid Gotman (viola), Lawrence Strieby (horn), Ling Ling Guan (violin), Philip Ross (oboe), Thomas Stubbs (percussion), Thomas Stubbs (timpani), Thomas Drake (trumpet), Takaoki Sugitani (violin), Susan Slaughter (trumpet), Timothy Myers (trombone), Tina Ward (clarinet), Wendy Plank Rosen (violin), William James (percussion), Warren Goldberg (double bass), Vera Parkin (keyboards), Tod Bowermaster (horn), Susan Gordon (viola), Ronald Moberly (double bass), Ross Snyder (horn), Richard Holmes (timpani), Richard Brewer (viola), Rebeccaxer Hall (violin), Sarah Hogan (double bass), Scott Andrews (clarinet), Stephen Lange (trombone), Silvian Iticovici (violin), Shannon Farrell Williams (viola), Sebastien Gingras (viola), John Zirbel (horn), Jenny Lind Jones (violin), Catherine Lehr (viola), Celeste Golden (violin), Carolyn White (double bass), Carolyn Banham (oboe), Carolyn Banham (horn), Charlene Clark (violin), Chris Tantillo (viola), Daniel Lee (viola), Darwyn Apple (violin), Dana Edson Myers (violin), Christopher Carson (double bass), Christian Woehr (viola), Brittany Boulding (violin), Bradford Buckley (contra-bassoon), Andrea Kaplan (flute), Andrew Gott (bassoon), Amy Jo Rhine (horn), Alvin McCall (viola), Alison Harney (violin), Angie Smart (violin), Anne Fagerburg (viola), Bradford Buckley (bassoon), Bjorn Ranheim (viola), Barbara Orland (oboe), Asako Kuboki (violin), David DeRiso (double bass), David Halen (violin), Haruka Watanabe (violin), Heidi Harris (violin), Gregory Roosa (horn), Gerard Pagano (trombone), Gerald Fleminger (viola), Henry Claude (percussion), Hiroko Yoshida (violin), Jane Price (violin), James Wehrman (horn), James Meyer (clarinet), James Czyzewski (viola), George Berry (bassoon), Frances Tietov (harp), Diana Haskell (clarinet), Donald Martin (double bass), Deborah Bloom (violin), David Kim (viola), Elizabeth Dziekonski (violin), Emily Ho (violin), Felicia Foland (bassoon), Eva Kozma (violin), Erin Schreiber (violin), Erik Harris (double bass), John Kasica (percussion)
David Robertson

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Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony, performed here by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of David Robertson, is a thrilling distillation of musical themes from Adams’ 2005 opera Dr. Atomic. This 2007 work is a 25-minute white-knuckle ride that manages to convey all the drama, dread, tension and uncertainty that distinguished Adam’s impressionistic examination of the life of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. It’s a tale blending history, politics, science and ethics, centered around “an anti-hero, laced with deep moral dilemmas,” as Atomic Symphony liner-notes writer Jeremy Denk puts It. It is a real-life saga in which the fate of humanity truly hangs in the balance. And it still does: as the New York Times noted, Dr. Atomic remains “all too timely.”

The New York Times has also praised Dr. Atomic as Adams’ “most complex and masterly music...The tension mounts as Mr. Adams builds up a din of pummeling rhythms and fractured meters, with orchestra chords exploding into shards of harmonic debris: call it Atomic Minimalism.” The opera received its premiere in San Francisco and was restaged last autumn in a sold-out production at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Doctor Atomic subsequently opened at the ENO in London to unanimous acclaim. The Observer admired "Adams's meditative, richly faceted score”; The Times said, “Once again Adams has turned 20th-century history into absorbing, provocative music-theatre.”

Paired on this disc with Dr. Atomic Symphony is Adams’ 2001 Guide To Strange Places, an equally kinetic, though far less disquieting, composition, inspired, Adams has said, by a family trip to Southern France, the title taken from a guidebook Adams found. The 22-minute work was also the springboard for a highly regarded 2003 dance piece by New York City Ballet choreographer Peter Martins, as part of a John Adams Festival at Lincoln Center. The New York Times calls Guide “a knock out,” one that “teems with wide-eyed curiosity and non-stop energy.”

Doctor Atomic Symphony is being released during an extraordinarily fertile period for Adams. This May the composer himself conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a production of his 2006 opera A Flowering Tree, released by Nonesuch in 2008. The Los Angeles Times declared that “the blissfully beautiful two-hour score enchants from first bar to last ... The sounds are magical.” In 2008, Adams also penned a frank and fascinating memoir, Hallelujah Junction, and Nonesuch in tandem released a two-disc retrospective of the same name. Said Publishers Weekly, "Adams's searingly introspective autobiography reveals the workings of a brilliant musical mind responsible for some of contemporary America's most inventive and original music."

Reviews

September 2009

David Robertson's sure guidance encourages the St Louis SO through performances that are as powerful as they are agile.

4th September 2009

Reworked into a three-movement symphony, the dark profundity of the subject is foregrounded in characteristically complex, tightly woven musical ideas...Recorded live, there’s an emphatic urgency to the playing, wholly in keeping with music that seems fervently alive to both felt and imagined experience.

7th August 2009

This tauter orchestral résumé of the opera is far more purposeful and coherent, partly because now Adams emphasises the more nagging, propulsive elements in his original score, though he still finds the space in the final movement to include the opera's stand-out vocal number Batter My Heart, with the Purcell-like baritone line given to a solo trumpet.

26th July 2009

This three-movement symphony is an orchestral distillation of the opera, captured in furious brass explosions and Adams's vivid orchestration. Oppenheimer's heartrending aria "Batter my Heart", here played by solo trumpet, sounds mysterious and beguiling if not quite as evocative as the original.

17th July 2009

Adams’s orchestral dexterity. David Robertson and his St Louis Symphony Orchestra relish every colour and texture in music where rhythms, themes and layers seem in perpetual transformation. Guide to Strange Places, from 2001, is especially mercurial, the sounds dappled and pierced by jazzy xylophone, lugubrious contrabassoon or embattled marimbas on a constantly interrupted journey to a destination unknown...performances and the recording are top-drawer.

John Adams - Doctor Atomic Symphony

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