John Adams
Violin Concerto / Shaker Loops

The minimalism of John Adams is quite different from that of the more famous Philip Glass and Steve Reich: less obsessive and labyrinthine, more free and airy, open to tradition that is reworked to give greater ambiguity to the pieces. These considerations apply only to the first phase of Adams's career (pieces like "Grand Pianola Music" or the theater opera "Nixon in China," for example) because the American composer soon frees himself from the stylistic residues of that school and produces deliberately hybrid music that is defined as post-minimalist.

Listening to the two pieces present on this CD, it seems indeed that minimalism is now just a distant memory: the first is a classic Violin Concerto, written in 1993, while the second, "Shaker Loops," had a first draft in 1977 for seven string instruments but was reworked in 1983 for string orchestra, and it is this version that is recorded here.

"Shaker Loops" is one of Adams's best-known and most performed pieces: in the title it references the loop technique (fragments of magnetic tape spliced together to repeat a melodic or rhythmic figure infinitely) and the so-called "to shake" technique (i.e., playing a tremolo or trills on a string instrument; but it is also a reference to the Shaker religious sect). The beginning is stormy, but later the piece calms down and showcases over its 24-minute duration an alternation between lyrical and calm moments with others in which the mass sound of the string orchestra prevails, exploited in all its density and strength.

The "Violin Concerto" has a tripartite form in fast-slow-fast tempos and truly has nothing minimalist about it. It rather seems to hark back to the greats of the first half of the 20th century: Berg, Stravinsky, Schoenberg. It is an interesting piece, although perhaps burdened by the influence of the European tradition: something we would like to avoid when listening to an American composer... In these 34 minutes, the absolute protagonist is the violin, which weaves a sort of infinite melody with the orchestra in the background: there is no competition between the latter and the soloist (the great Gidon Kremer in this recording), but there is an idea never abandoned by Adams, that of a certain rhythmic regularity, which makes the piece an example of refined musicality and, in its best moments, effectiveness.

Released by Nonesuch, the CD is therefore a nice calling card for the American composer.