My colleague Victor Carr Jr’s succinct and vivid description of John Adams’ 1984 Harmonielehre (type John Adams in Search Reviews) provides an excellent introduction to a composition that has deservedly found its way into the contemporary orchestral canon. This is (I believe) its fifth commercially released version on disc, and the second featuring the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, who premiered the work and recorded it with Edo de Waart on Nonesuch.
Sonically speaking, the present SACD offers the best sound quality in terms of ambient depth, dynamic range, and three-dimensional orchestral image in which no detail goes unaccounted. What is more, Michael Tilson Thomas’ brisk first-movement tempos and confident, effortless sculpting of Adams’ vertiginous antiphony between orchestral choirs reveals the extent to which this orchestra–and most other professional American orchestras, I wager–have absorbed Adams’ stylistic fingerprints.
Thomas elicits lusher, more inflected string playing in the second movement’s dark, lyrical opening, and more defined yet dynamically unfettered brass playing in the harrowing climax. Only the third movement slightly disappoints in comparison with de Waart; the latter’s lighter, faster, and more playful handling of the intricate high-register writing convinces more than Thomas’ slower, texturally diffident sobriety.
To conclude, Adams’ joyful, energetic miniature Short Ride in a Fast Machine gets as sleek and accurate a reading as one can expect from these forces, although I slightly prefer the stronger accents and sense of dance distinguishing de Waart’s earlier (albeit not as well played) San Francisco recording.
