Adams, J: Hallelujah Junction

“…Phrygian Gates is a 25-minute movement of almost romantic scope and ambition, with genuinely expressive harmonies. Ralph Van Raat gives full weight to all that emotional potential, and he combines superbly with Maarten van Veen on Hallelujah Junction, the two-piano work from 1996 that shows how far Adams's music evolved in less than two decades.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2007 ****

“China Gates and Phrygian Gates from 1977-78 show Adams defining his own style as opposed to the classical minimalists such as Riley, Reich and Glass. China Gates is under six minutes and consistently delicate, while Phrygian Gates is a blockbuster of nearly 25. In Phrygian Gates the repetition is constant but there are also abrupt dislocations which function like film cuts – or the electronic gate which is meant by these titles. The technique is the same in the larger concert works as well as the operas that have made Adams famous. There seems to be no obvious reason why one texture ends and another begins, but that's the point of the discontinuity – and it goes back to Satie and Stravinsky.
American Berserk (2000) is the most recent piece and both words in the title are justified.
From an early age Adams was surrounded by popular music and jazz on equal terms with classical composers. That background figures here with the crazier improvisational Ives and – very obviously – the swinging mechanical complexities of Conlon Nancarrow's studies for player piano. As in Grand Pianola Music, it's extravagantly entertaining.
In the exhilarating two-piano Hallelujah Junction (1996) Nancarrow again stands as godfather and you can hear the rhythmic hallelujahs as it belts on to its hilarious climax.
The Dutch pianists, cleanly recorded, deliver everything with consistent aplomb.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The performances by Ralph van Raat…are a triumph of deceptiveness: that is, playing these pieces must require the utmost concentration as you count the bars past, avoid those little modifications to rhythm that a pianist will instinctively deploy to bring a performance alive, but van Raat obtains a near-hypnotic control in the two early pieces, almost mechanical in its reliability, and he bubbles with life in the later two” International Piano

“[Mr. Adams] would surely like Mr. van Raat’s hard work and enthusiasm” New York Times

“Russo’s approach was mesmeric” Gramophone

“You'd think such repetitive, obsessively patterned music wouldn’t allow much in the way of interpretative freedom, but in fact the two recordings are markedly different. On the whole the performances on the Black Box CD are more soft-edged and meditative. The most startling difference is in the sleepy pastoral that is the middle movement of Road Movies. Played by James Ehnes and Andrew Russo on Black Box, this emerges as a dark-toned, searching piece; played by Leila Josefovich and John Novacek on Nonesuch it has a playful, sexy edge.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2005 ****

“Superbly performed and very well engineered, these are recordings which can stand alongside any in similar repertoire. As an introduction and deepening of one’s experiences with the world of ‘repetitive’ music this is likely to be an eye or ear-opener for many, including die-hard fans like myself...If your experiences of minimalism until now have been negative, this is a perfect place to commence rehabilitation.” MusicWeb International, January 2011