John Adams: Harmonielehre

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the RSNO under Peter Oundjian manage very effectively to project this single sweep of sound from beginning to end. Brass and percussion stand out for all the right reasons...but it's really a... — Gramophone Magazine, February 2014 More…

Release Date: 4th Nov 2013
Catalogue No: CHSA5129
Label: Chandos
Length: 70 minutes

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This release includes a digital booklet

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Justin Adams: Doctor Atomic Symphony

Work length24:32

$6.00

$7.75

$10.50

Peter Oundjian, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Recorded: 30 April 2013
Recording Venue: Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, UK

I. The Laboratory

Track length2:05

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

II. Panic

Track length14:55

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

III. Trinity

Track length7:32

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Justin Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Work length4:13

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Peter Oundjian, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Recorded: 30 April 2013
Recording Venue: Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, UK

Justin Adams: Harmonielehre

Work length41:24

$10.00

$12.85

$17.50

Peter Oundjian, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Recorded: 10, 11 February 2013
Recording Venue: Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, UK

I. Untitled

Track length17:29

$4.00

$5.15

$7.00

II. The Anfortas Wound

Track length12:29

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

III. Meister Eckhardt and Quackie

Track length11:26

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

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In this new release Peter Oundjian and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra tackle two seminal works by the American composer John Adams. Harmonielehre, a symphony in all but name, is an expansive, richly expressive, and often breathtaking work. It takes its title from a 1911 text by Arnold Schoenberg on harmonic theory and evokes the lush soundworld of that composer’s early tonal period. Also heard throughout the score are echoes of Mahler, Wagner, Strauss, Sibelius, Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky. The piece also takes inspiration from some of Adams’s own strange and surreal dreams. The Doctor Atomic Symphony, based on Adams’s controversial opera Doctor Atomic, focuses on the character of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as preparations are made for the first test of the atomic bomb.

Although played without a break, the symphony falls into three distinct sections: ‘The Laboratory’, ‘Panic’, and ‘Trinity’. The symphony’s concluding section takes its title from the name given to the bomb test site by Oppenheimer himself, with reference to a deeply spiritual John Donne sonnet. This poem is set to music at the end of Act I of the opera and here in the symphony the aria’s intense vocal line is performed by solo trumpet. Also featured on the disc is John Adams’s energetic fanfare Short Ride in a Fast Machine.

Reviews

February 2014

the RSNO under Peter Oundjian manage very effectively to project this single sweep of sound from beginning to end. Brass and percussion stand out for all the right reasons...but it's really a sense of collective unity imparted by the orchestra during the loud sections that is most impressive.

18th December 2013

The music is played with huge élan by the RSNO...The results are highly charged and exciting performances of three works that place Adams at the very forefront of American contemporary classical music and deservedly so.

Offer,John Adams: Harmonielehre

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