The John Adams Edition is not some kind of official John Adams anthology, but it might as well be. The hefty set -- four CDs and two Blu-Ray discs with live concerts and other goodies -- documents Adams' year as composer-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin Philharmonic), and it offers a fine sampling of Adams' work as one could wish. The music ranges from the mid-1980s (Harmonielehre, whose name signaled Adams' ambitions so vividly) to recent works. There are instrumental and vocal works; there are crowd ...
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The John Adams Edition is not some kind of official John Adams anthology, but it might as well be. The hefty set -- four CDs and two Blu-Ray discs with live concerts and other goodies -- documents Adams' year as composer-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin Philharmonic), and it offers a fine sampling of Adams' work as one could wish. The music ranges from the mid-1980s (Harmonielehre, whose name signaled Adams' ambitions so vividly) to recent works. There are instrumental and vocal works; there are crowd-pleasers (Short Ride in a Fast Machine), atmospheric Americana (City Noir), big theatrical statements (two CDs are given over to The Gospel According to the Other Mary, which suffers slightly as a standalone work instead of as a theater piece, but which is still well worth rehearing), virtuoso music (the recent Scheherazade 2, with Leila Josefowicz as violin soloist), and comparative rarities (the 1989 Walt Whitman setting The Wound Dresser). There are four different conductors,...
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