John Adams Premiere at the Barbican, review

By Ivan Hewett 303PM GMT thirteen March 2010

IN new years, John Adamss integrity to welcome his American low-pitched birthright has turn some-more and some-more urgent. Hes evoked the American arcadia of Charles Ives, Broadway-style songs, animation music, highway movies, even Seventies funk. In his ultimate piece, City Noir, he ventures in to new territory, profitable loyalty to the moist big-band receptive to advice of Ellington and Gil Evans and the feverishness and risk of movie noir.

But prior to that he conducted 3 quintessentially European functions of the early 20th century, with not a snippet of feverishness or menace. First came Colin Matthewss orchestrations of dual Debussy piano preludes that elicit the wind. They were brilliantly done, but I longed for the whipping rhythmic fad that usually a span of hands at the set of keys can bring. Then a opening of Ravels Valses Nobles et Sentimentales that at initial was rather hard-driven but in the future staid in to the loose coherence the song needs.

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The most appropriate of the 3 in conditions of opening was Stravinskys Concerto for Piano and Winds, a grandly Handelian e.g. of neo-classical motoric appetite that can simply receptive to advice ponderous, but here was full of light and dancing appetite and additionally a startling Chopinesque grace, interjection to soloist Jeremy Denk.

After all this strong refinement, Adamss new work seemed really big and muscular. The perfect appetite of the opening was astonishing, similar to a incessant suit appurtenance of chaotic overlapping motives, evoking a unfortunate follow by dim streets.

The delayed transformation led solemnly from a neon-lit mist in to a span of indolent solos, beautifully played by saxophonist Simon Haram and trombonist Dudley Bright. Then came a crisis, where an unrelenting thought attempted to get a squeeze on the music, but in the future gave up. It was a impulse when the song pennyless by the own agenda, and became obligatory and original. Later, at the commencement of the third movement, a sole wail evoked the unhappy of a city at night.

But these distinguished moments didnt diffuse a clarity of frustration. Throughout, Adamss orchestral ability and rhythmic appetite were astonishing. But the song was so bustling keeping the universe of movie noir and Gil Evans at only the right area that it frequency acquired a clear temperament of the own.

Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Wednesday.