Customer Rating:  
Summary: No Masterpiece, But Good Stuff
Comment: Naive and Sentimental Music is not the masterpiece that Harmonielehre is. Although they employ similar orchestral forces and have similar compositional structures, the former doesn't reach the kind of tension or exuberance that the latter achieves. Nevertheless, there's also a lot of beautiful music here, and if you're a fan of John Adams you will probably find this piece worthwhile.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Postmodern Polyphony
Comment: Reading this bunch of intelligent reviews for John Adam's work is a great experience. No one seems to be bored by this score and the music intonates lots of different feelings.
Personally I find this music a masterpiece. Not because of all the obvious skill displayed from composer and performers alike. Nor because (as most agree) the orchestration is perfect.
What I think the core of this artistic achievement is John Adams ability capture the Zeitgeist of 1999. It is as if the optimism, all the hype and drive of the 1990s found its way into his score. This is very much music for a certain place at a certain point in history.
Adams also turns this upside down when melancholy and irony takes over in the last movement. There is a ambivalence at play not heard in many film scores (nor in most music at all).
The analogy with Mahler is obvious - a classical composers takes the simple and perhaps sentimental pop idiom then turns it into monument of his time.
John Adams is - I think - the better composer, but the fate of his music (and its critics) will be very similar indeed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Flash and No Substance
Comment: As a composer I do actually admirer Adams' skill as an orchestrator and I do like his 'Harmonium' best for it's 'naive' very American(to a British ear) beauty which has a lovely sense of unfolding harmony.
Unfortunately a lot of his music-and this cd is included-is to me just flash technique.Flash,showy and yes-impressive orchestral writing.BUT there seems to be no real substance here.The first and third movement start very nicely indeed.But as other reviewers have said the music quickly loses direction and descends into more complex showy(percussion driven) music as if he is trying to show off his technique.It lacks any real depth.It reminds me of much current film music that is very brilliant highly skilled complex orchestral writing but with not much real musical worth.That is forgiveable because it is written to enhance action on screen.But this ain't no great symphony.His Chamber Symphony is also highly praised but again it's all flash technique to me and not much else.Fast Ride,Loopalooza,Grand Pianola,Century Rolls all to me are brilliant technically flash pieces BUT with no real musical core.
Danielpour suffers from this shallowness too-he is again a brilliantly skilled guy.
There is a relentless tediousness to these movements-almost as if he is scared of rests!
Customer Rating:
Summary: thousands of notes for no apparent reason...
Comment: The following is from my review of a live performance of Naive & Sentimental Music by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. All comments apply equally to this recording.
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Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen is conducting tonight, and he trots onstage displaying the "boyish good looks" and "hip wardrobe" that are inevitably mentioned whenever you read about him. The first half of the program is Naive and Sentimental Music by John Adams, which I am particularly looking forward to. I was obsessed with musical Minimalism during my formative geeky teenage years, especially the Holy Trinity of composers Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams. I wore out my LPs of "needle stuck in the groove" Minimalist classics such as Glass' Einstein on the Beach and The Photographer, Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and Octet, and Adams' Harmonium and Shaker Loops. I've also continued to listen to the newer music by all of these composers (with varying degrees of disappointment) here in the "laser beam stuck in the aluminum" CD era. John Adams has certainly made out well for himself in the "establishment" orchestra and opera world over the years, becoming perhaps the most performed and applauded contemporary composer out there right now. (Interestingly, though, his "official" website is awful compared to Phil's and Steve's...)
A massive orchestra is assembled on the stage for the nearly hour-long Naive and Sentimental Music, including a rogue's gallery of percussionists playing such exotic instruments as almglocken, high anvil, Chinese gongs, "ranch" triangles, and sleigh bells. The usual full complement of brass, strings, and winds are also joined by two harps, piano, celeste, guitar, and -- as if Adams couldn't get all the sounds he wanted from the 100+ other instruments on stage -- a Kurzweil synthesizer.
There's something I've noticed listening to quite a few newly composed orchestra works over the years: beware of huge percussion sections -- more often than not, it turns out the composer is trying to compensate for a lack of melodic and harmonic interest by throwing in as many gadgets, toys, and strange sounds as possible to keep things "interesting." Unfortunately, Naive and Sentimental Music confirms this observation.
The first movement begins with the awkwardly amplified guitarist (who is actually one of the CSO's string bass players) strumming chords rhythmically and accompanied by flutes and strings attempting to establish a very unmemorable melodic line. More and more instruments join the mix playing what are probably various permutations of that feeble melody, those percussionists keep busy back there running back and forth between different instruments, and Esa-Pekka tries to hold it all together with curious but entertaining arm gestures. You get the idea that this all sounded cool when Mr. Adams pressed play on his expensive MIDI music software set-up, but that real human beings are being asked to do some pretty strange inhuman things and that there are probably more time signatures and polyrhythms going on here than anybody should ever have to keep track of. It keeps building and building, yet just sitting there making lots of noise and not really going anywhere... and then it's over.
Actually we've only just begun... now it's time for the second movement, "Mother of the Man," which we learn from Mr. Adams' (really really long) program notes is a "gloss on Busoni's Berceuse elegiaque." That poor bassist-turned-guitarist is front and center again here, strangling all of his notes. Bowed vibraphone is featured prominently, setting an ethereal mood and promting everyone to nudge their companion and point at the stage -- "Look at that... they're playing the vibes with violin bows... isn't that cool?" Things meander along pleasantly here, occasionally becoming dissonant but mostly floating in an almost New Age-y bliss. Fellow audience members are nodding off in droves, and frankly I consider joining them a few times... The low brass chords concluding this movement are particularly lovely, but frankly you can enjoy this same kind of mood in about half the time by simply listening to Busoni's Berceuse elegiaque instead.
As is customary at the end of every slow, quiet movement performed at Orchestra Hall, the audience coughs, hacks, shuffles, and converse amongst themselves in the most obvious way possible. It would almost be funny if it weren't so embarrasing... do the audiences do this in L.A. too, I wonder? And what about Finland? Esa-Pekka offered no clues...
At last we arrive at the final movement, "Chain to the Rhythm" which lives up to the probably unintended masochistic implications of its name. This is a real "garbage pizza" of a loud and clattery mess where Adams empties out everything in his bag of tricks including repeated clarinet eighth-notes fading in and out ripped right from the pages of Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. The percussionists are running around beating the sh*t out of everything in sight, brass players and blatting out chords all over the place, the poor string players are fiddling around with endless ostinatos, and Mr. Salonen is doing a modern dance worthy of Martha Graham. For the first time that I could see, the Kurzweil synthesizer lady finally does something for a couple minutes, but even her amplified instrument can't be heard above all the clutter. The guitarist looks happy to be sitting this one out, and after thousands of notes have been hurled at us for no apparent reason, the whole thing suddenly stops. Several people leap to their feet shouting "Bravos" and whistling so loud you'd think the Bears had just made it to the next round of the NFL playoffs, while the rest of us clap politely and can hardly wait to get a cocktail during intermission to soothe our frayed nerves and throbbing eardrums.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Still Searching
Comment: The earlier music of John Adams has been some of the most touching and engaging music to me, and it remains in my regular listening repertoire. With the "Chamber Symphony" being one of my all time favorite works of Adams from years past, I have increasingly lost interest in his most recent music.
His recent "Naive and Sentimental Music" is, unfortunately, no exception to this trend. While everyone else raves about this new work, this piece feels overblown and meandering. Being one for really giving it all I can, it seems that this piece will not do it for me, and this is after hearing it performed live and having listened to the CD at least 15 times.
Somehow, it seems I am one of an extremely small number of listeners (perhaps the only one) who does not enjoy this work, unike the rest of the current concert audience. I have had a similar experience with "On The Transmigration of Souls".
Nonetheless, Adams still has an exquisite command of the orchestral palette, and his music exudes the energy and atmosphere of a true master able to unfold a musical intention with conviction. Where his intention takes this listener is not anywhere very intriguing or moving.
I am still searching in his new work for the journey his earlier work is still able to take me on.
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