John Adams is a contemporary composer, if not the contemporary composer, whose music speaks for itself. Adams' compositions have managed to forge a connection between the majesty of 19th-century orchestral music and the rhythmic energy of vernacular music in an immensely influential musical experiment remarkable for the visceral immediacy it holds for concert audiences. His is a musical aesthetic that requires no introduction. What is there to say?
As it turns out, quite a lot, if Alarm Will Sound's new album, Splitting Adams, is any indication. A new collaboration between violist and Q2 Music host Nadia Sirota's podcast, Meet the Composer, and one of her several bands — Alarm Will Sound, headed and conducted by Alan Pierson — Splitting Adams alternates between performances of Adams' chamber symphonies and interview segments featuring the composer, Pierson, Sirota, and other members of the band.
For one thing, Adams is his own greatest advocate, an erudite and articulate composer with an established talent for explaining his music in ways that actually make it even easier to enjoy, and Sirota is simply — let us not pretend to be objective — the most entertaining music journalist in the field today.
Furthermore, in the early 1990s, when snobbish critics dismissed his music for its clarity, Adams responded by saying, effectively, You want complexity? Fine, I'll give you complexity! in the form of his first Chamber Symphony, an almost relentlessly dense, frenetic, dissonant piece of music, paired here with its creature double-feature sequel Son of Chamber Symphony, composed for Alarm Will Sound. If any piece of Adams' music benefits from just a little explanation, it is the Chamber Symphony, and the verbal insights offered in Sirota's audio program notes are nearly as elucidating as the ensemble's witty, rocking performance of both works.
Even without the background offered by the interview segments, these would be ideally engaging and immediate performances of these chamber symphonies — lively, clear, virtuosic and deeply sensitive to each piece's moments of earnest lyricism. But thanks to the spoken insights into the composition and interpretation of these dazzling little symphonies, Splitting Adams offers the listener not just a great album of new music but a brand new way of hearing it.
John Adams: Splitting Adams
Cantaloupe Music | Released April 21, 2017
Available for Purchase on Amazon | iTunes
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