John Adams
The Adams Family may be a low budget regional filmmaking collective, but it continues to raise the bar on horror art cinema.
Reviews of Hélène Grimaud’s latest homage to Clara Schumann and La Tempête investigates seeming stylistic overlaps in the music of J. S. Bach, Henryk Górecki, Jehan Alain, Knut Nystedt, and John Adams.
This recording presents one of the most lucid and well-programmed portraits of John Adams to emerge, well, in a long while.
Hellbender is not just a fabulous indie film about witches, it’s also an original coming-of-age horror movie.
BMOP’s performances of three John Adams chamber symphonies, all conducted by music director Gil Rose, offer welcome, distinctive takes on the triptych.
Peter Oundjian and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra deliver a great album, smartly programmed and played to the hilt. Leonard Bernstein’s live Mahler was often electrifying; this performance, even with some cracked notes and hairy transitions, certainly is.
It is, clearly, a crafty Beethoven remix and the ways John Adams assimilates the older composer’s language into his latest style are fascinating.
This weekend’s concert fires on all cylinders. Don’t miss it.
The nearly 10 year wait for the premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s string quartet Homunculus was worth it.
Commentary: Top Classical Recordings of 2016
I make no claims to have listened to everything released in 2016; here are my picks for the top classical recordings of the year.
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