Adams Gnarly Buttons; John's Book of Alleged Dances
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: John Adams
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Nonesuch
Magazine Review Date: 8/1998
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 61
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 7559 79465-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Gnarly Buttons |
John Adams, Composer
John Adams, Conductor John Adams, Composer London Sinfonietta Michael Collins, Clarinet |
| John's Book of Alleged Dances |
John Adams, Composer
John Adams, Composer Kronos Qt |
Author:
Anyone who suspects that Cage’s prepared piano was a period cul-de-sac should hear the way John Adams works it into his Book of Alleged Dances. The original idea was to make a digitally sampled loop of the piano part which would then be triggered by one of the quartet members; but practical considerations necessitated recording the loops, which the quartet now perform live. John’s Book of Alleged Dances (the equivocation in the title refers to dance steps that have yet to be invented) is prime-cut Adams, fidgety, tuneful, teeming with invention and all-but tactile in its aural variety.
We start by following a streetcar from town to coast and back again, then visit “Toot Nipple” with “chainsaw triads on the cello”. There’s a raw-edged “Hoe-Down” for leader David Harrington, a “Pavane” for cellist Joan Jeanrenaud and a doleful Habanera, “a lament for a season without baseball” as Adams himself puts it. “Hammer & Chisel” are contractor friends who construct to a knotty toccata; a slithery “Alligator Escalator” employs reptilian harmonics and a chirpy “Serenade” pays subtle homage to Beethoven and Schubert. These and more are kept on a high flame by the Kronos Quartet, whereas Gnarly Buttons (with oblique reference to walking sticks and Gertrude Stein) calls on the combined talents of Michael Collins and the London Sinfonietta. A more intense piece by far (rather less memorably, too), its dry but colourful demeanour occasionally recalls Schoenberg’s similarly spice-flavoured Serenade. The first movement is based on a Protestant shape-note hymn; the second is a ‘Mad-Cow’ hoe-down (written for Adams’s British friends and the principal point of speculative contact with the Schoenberg) and the third, a warming song with sure-fire ‘hit’ potential. Collins does Adams proud, and so do the London Sinfonietta.
Further commentary seems superfluous, and in any case Adams himself pips me to the post with his own entertaining annotation. The recordings are first-rate. '
We start by following a streetcar from town to coast and back again, then visit “Toot Nipple” with “chainsaw triads on the cello”. There’s a raw-edged “Hoe-Down” for leader David Harrington, a “Pavane” for cellist Joan Jeanrenaud and a doleful Habanera, “a lament for a season without baseball” as Adams himself puts it. “Hammer & Chisel” are contractor friends who construct to a knotty toccata; a slithery “Alligator Escalator” employs reptilian harmonics and a chirpy “Serenade” pays subtle homage to Beethoven and Schubert. These and more are kept on a high flame by the Kronos Quartet, whereas Gnarly Buttons (with oblique reference to walking sticks and Gertrude Stein) calls on the combined talents of Michael Collins and the London Sinfonietta. A more intense piece by far (rather less memorably, too), its dry but colourful demeanour occasionally recalls Schoenberg’s similarly spice-flavoured Serenade. The first movement is based on a Protestant shape-note hymn; the second is a ‘Mad-Cow’ hoe-down (written for Adams’s British friends and the principal point of speculative contact with the Schoenberg) and the third, a warming song with sure-fire ‘hit’ potential. Collins does Adams proud, and so do the London Sinfonietta.
Further commentary seems superfluous, and in any case Adams himself pips me to the post with his own entertaining annotation. The recordings are first-rate. '
ADAMS Gnarly Buttons; John's Book of Alleged Dances
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