Century Rolls is a piano concerto composed in 1996 for Emmanuel Ax and the Cleveland orchestra. Adams’ inspiration came while listening to recordings of player-pianos, being struck by how the mechanism radically altered the essence of the music, giving it a “certain bright, edgy quality and rhythmic alertness.” The piece does have an overtly mechanistic quality right from the beginning with its repeated woodwind chords and machine-like figures. Ax performs with a crisp precision that turns into colorful virtuosity as the piano writing takes on the characteristics of Gerswhin, Rachmaninov, and other piano-rolls makers.
That this goes on for a bit harks back to Adams’ minimalist beginnings, and in fact the work as a whole is devoid of the lyricism that graced some of his other large-scale works like Harmonielehre and Harmonium. Still, with repeated listening you begin to discern deeper levels (aided no doubt by Christoph von Dohnányi’s sharply focused conducting), even if the melodies are not particularly engaging. The second movement (Manny’s Gym) does offer some repose from the machine-like processes, evoking the essence of Satie’s Gymnopiedies. The finale (Hail Bop) grabs you with its honky-tonk rhythms and intrigues through its distillation of Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano techniques.
For the remainder of the program we jump over to England and join Kent Nagano and the Hallé Orchestra. Slonimsky’s Earbox (named for musician and author Nicholas Slonimsky) opens with the frenzied flourishes of Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale and continues nervously as Adams aims to combine his earlier minimalist technique with his new, more densely contrapuntal style. However, the disc’s highlight is Lollapalooza, a brief, jaunty work in which the orchestra repeatedly hammers out a tune composed to the actual rhythm of the title (played to the nines by the Hallé brass). Whether or not it was intentional, this gives the music a groove reminiscent of the funky get-down jams of the 1970s, and makes it a helluva lot of fun (especially in Nonesuch’s powerfully dynamic recording). I must say that, although it’s brilliantly constructed, Century Rolls is not one of Adams’ most successfully communicative works; but Lollapalooza would make a great CD single.
