Green Umbrella: John Adams
It is often said that John Adams is the most beloved contemporary composer in America. Well, it’s especially true in LA, where he is a regular at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He curated last year’s Minimalist Jukebox series. He wrote his Naive and Sentimental Music dedicated to and premiered by Esa Pekka Salonen, the LA Phil’s conductor (who conducted it last Friday).
(edit: It should be noted that Adams is turning 60 soon. So it is appropriate to be celebrating Adams year…though not too much, as I’m sure after 2006, we now never want to hear another Mozart piece ever again.)
And tonight he conducted two of his larger scale works, Gnarly Buttons and Grand Pianola Music.
The evening began with a last minute addition of China Gates, a rather contemplative solo piano piece. Though written in the late 70s, it wouldn’t sound out of place in a video game with its slightly ominous stand alone bass notes and tinkling high register that sounds like crystals jutting from the ground with water running over them in a fantasy cave.
With 1996’s Gnarly Buttons, Adams’ music takes a turn for the more, well, gnarly. It’s pretty much a clarinet concerto with the soloist out front, which is not what I think of when I think John Adams. Adams to me is a flute-loving guy, meaning that his works are constantly using flutes to punctuate, sing, run, soar. While Adams played the clarinet growing up, as a composer his instrument is undoubtedly the orchestra. And the way he scores flutes tends to make the music sound big, sort of the way a bird flying in front of a building can make the building seem even bigger.
What the clarinet does is make the music somewhat darker in tone, especially with its melancholy melodies that sometimes the other players are dragged into playing. And it’s sometimes a weird mix with synthesized sounds coming into the fray. But what really stands out here are the dots of energy streaming through the music. You had the violins doing Psycho-like shriekings until Adams comically let them end the first movement by themselves like they were caught with their pants down. And later he had a string hit that kept plugging away even after the rest of the orchestra had already turned a corner in the music. He often subscribes to this salad vision of music, where things mix but remain discrete.
And finally, with 1982’s Grand Pianola Music, Adams gives us the big American minimalism sound that we all love, which of course means flute and lots of it. I saw this a couple years ago at the Hollywood Bowl and needless to say that in the intimate venue of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and with the composer conducting, this was much more memorable. The brightness of the music jumps out at your like a neon sign. In fact, the singers who vocalise during the piece were wearing bright shimmering pink dresses, vaguely looking like they’d come from a Star Trek episode. The music was equally otherwordly with lots of in your face percussion and continual piano arpeggiation.
I remember reading that Steve Reich didn’t much care for Mozart but he did like some of Beethoven’s stuff. And with Grand Pianola I can see why. Adams quotes the Emperor Piano Concerto’s opening piano statement turning it in a vigorous run of self-affirming American spirit. It also ties into the inspiration of the piece, where Adams dreamt about two long limos on a highway stretching out into long pianos playing the Emperor. Visually on stage that’s exactly what they looked like.
What Adams has done is taken minimalism from its introverted beginnings to its extroverted end. So much of what he does sounds commercial. The music often swells with enough suspended cymbal crashing to rival a reality TV show. And the structures of his works feel traditional, and as we all know from Tchaikovsky, everyone loves a good musical build up and climax. The music rocks so hard that by the end even the LA Weekly music critic Alan Rich (who sat right behind me) let out a joyful “yahoo.”
