This excellent disc
gives the listener a welcome chance
to get a feeling for the way John Adams’
music evolved over a period of ten years.
Crucially, this decade saw the conception
and completion of his first opera, ‘Nixon
in China’, an experience which had a
profound effect on his musical language.
Shaker Loops finds
Adams emerging from the shadow of Steve
Reich. It is a typically ingenious blend
of minimalism and New England energy
– even to the punning title, which plays
on a musical term for trills, ‘shakes’,
and the early religious sect known as
the Shakers. The result is a small masterpiece
for string orchestra, and as so often
with Adams, it is the surprise with
which one finds oneself reminded of
other not obviously related composers
that is a major part of the fascination
of the music. The opening, for example,
calls to my mind the buzzing strings
of Sibelius, e.g. in the finale of the
5th Symphony. Later, the
harmonics which proliferate like icicles
in the texture of this movement are
a magical touch. The strings of the
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra play
superbly.
The cantata The
Wound Dresser on track 2 is, for
me, a more problematic piece. It is
beautifully and sensitively performed
by the baritone Nathan Gunn, but I worry
about Adams’ choice of text. It is taken
from a poem by Walt Whitman, and records
that writer’s experiences as a nurse
during the civil war. Whitman describes
unflinchingly the terrible wounds he
saw and treated; an example is "…from
the stump of the arm, the amputated
hand, I undo the clotted lint, remove
the slough, wash off the matter and
blood…" – I’ll spare you more,
but suffice it to say this is a very
different Whitman from the one known
to lovers of the Sea Symphony or
Toward the Unknown Region of
Vaughan Williams.
Does this kind of text
really bear setting to music? I am not
convinced, though I would not for one
moment doubt Adams’ deep sincerity or
seriousness, and there is indeed a terrible
beauty about this music, full of compassion
as it is. A moving yet very uncomfortable
experience – which may well be precisely
what the composer intended.
As so often with these
Naxos compilations, the programming
of the music is a thing of elegance
in itself, so that the piece that follows
gently lifts the deep gloom of The
Wound-Dresser. This is Adams lovely
arrangement of Busoni’s Berceuse
élégiaque, a lullaby-like
piano piece, which Adams has set in
such a way as to emphasise its strange
dream-like quality. Again beautifully
performed by Marin Alsop and her forces.
(A surprising omission is that the liner
notes don’t even mention this piece).
The disc opens with
arguably Adams’ most celebrated work,
Short Ride in a Fast Machine. The
performers give this a crisp rhythmic
lift-off, and I suspect that, apart
from anything else, this is probably
the fastest performance on CD (please
don’t write if I’m wrong!) The textures
are certainly admirably clear, with
the advantage that one can hear that
wood-block tapping away the whole time,
so vital if one is to enjoy the constant
regrouping over the basic pulse. And,
for the first time, I relished the change
at the half-way stage to a deeper toned
wood-block – from ‘tick-tick’ to ‘tock-tock’
as it were. Such a simple touch, but
strangely thrilling.
A disc to prize for
Adams’ growing cohorts of admirers,
and an ideal introduction for the curious.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
see reviews by
Kevin
Sutton and John
Quinn October Recording of the Month
Nathan Gunn (baritone) 
