John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives

John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives

John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives
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CD Details

Composer: John [Composer] Adams
Conductor: John Adams
Orchestra: BBC Symphony Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-09-26
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. The Dharma At Big Sur: II. Sri Moonshine
Music CD 2
  1. My Father Knew Charles Ives: I. Concord
  2. My Father Knew Charles Ives: II. The Lake
  3. My Father Knew Charles Ives: III. The Mountain

Music reviews of John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives

Music Review: 2 great works, but 2 discs?
Rating: 5 Stars

I have to say I was getting worried that John Adams was becoming a has-been. El Nino's first half was much better than the second, I didn't particularly like Transmigration and I defy anyone to listen to his 2001 piano work American Berserk and tell me it's any good. But after this release, I stand humbly corrected -- he's still, in my opinion, America's, if not the world's, best living composer.

Dharma at Big Sur is scored for an electric violin and orchestra and uses a tuning system that's not well-tempered. What really makes this work special is the way the electric violinist plays soulfully and beautifully above the orchestra for almost the entire work in a sliding style I've never heard before in classical music. The first movement "A New Day" with its quiet and contemplative opening really feels like it's the creation of an entire universe. The climax of the second movement might be the most satisfying conclusion to any of Adams's works to date. Dharma is an absolute masterpiece.

My Father Knew Charles Ives is wonderful too, even if it's not as powerful or moving as Dharma. The work is both an homage to Ives and a reflection of Adams' life. Clearly, Adams had a great childhood. The first movement, Concord, is playful -- the clearest tribute to Ives, since it's sounds structurarlly similar to his Fourth of July. The chaos in Adams' Concord is a little more rigid than Ives', but it's still fun. The second movement, "The Lake", features a beautiful clarinet line that evokes the composer's father. The scurrying of the last movement, "The Mountain", seems needlessly frenetic at times, but the cathartic ending that results of it makes the voyage worth it.

My one bone to pick is with Nonesuch. The two works together represent about 52 minutes worth of music -- an amount that many would already consider stingy on a single CD, especially when other works like Guide to Strange Places go unrecorded. So why put these two works on 2 CDs? Is it to justify the $20 sticker price? An artistic statement to completely separate the two works? It just seems silly. But it's also forming a nasty pattern of sub-30 minute CDs that really should stop. People want to hear the astonishing sound world that Adams creates -- why try to limit it to 25 minutes at a time?

Buy this disc, even if it's split into 2 pieces. It's the best of his works yet!
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Description of John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur/My Father Knew Charles Ives

Featuring two highly-acclaimed commissioned orchestral works, The Dharma At Big Sur and My Father Knew Charles Ives, performed by the BBC Sumphony with Adams himself conducting. While panoramic in scope, these multi-part pieces are also deeply personal in nature. Described as "autobiographical sound memories" by the BBC, they evoke the well-traveled American composer's east coast/west coast life and wide-ranging musical education.
This is a splendid addition to the Adams discography, one that follows him from New England to California. Dharma at Big Sur is a concerto for electric violin. It begins by evoking the West's sun and easy living, but this is more than a musical piece of nature-painting. It rambles ambiently for a while before landing in an Indian raga, jazzy mode and ends with a type of heavenly good-naturedness. The electric violin is played by Tracy Silverman; a sixth string allows for the sonorous tones of the cello. The other work, presented on a second CD (so as to avoid culture shock?) is My Father knew Charles Ives, which, while apparently untrue, lets us know that Ives's New England sound and his wacky one-on-top-of-the-other methods will be found here, and, indeed, they are. It pays homage to some of Ives's music (the trumpet from his "The Unanswered Question" is clear here), but more than that, in its various sections ("The Lake;" "The Mountain") it evokes the nature of New England as picturesquely as Ives does, and parallels Adams's California in Dharma A pair of fascinating works, at times a bit thorny, but well worth it. --Robert Levine

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