John Adams' Harmonielehre was premiered on March 21, 1985 by the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Edo de Waart. It is worthwhile to mention these details so extensively, because it was quite special what was being played back then. Just think: a quasi symphony with a solid German title, performed by an orchestra from the American west coast. Adams here combined two worlds that until then (also
… in his own experience) were water and fire for each other: the cool repetitive patterns of (American) minimal music on the one hand and the pathos of (European) late romanticism on the other. In any case, Adams merged this into a musical expression that would then be of great use to him in the theater. The Doctor Atomic Symphony from 2007 is a split-off from one of those later theater productions. The music for this symphony is adapted from passages from Doctor Atomic, the 2005 opera in which baritone Gerald Finley played the role of the famous physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Halfway through the CD we hear the infectious orchestral work Short Ride in a Fast Machine, the title actually says it all. (HJ)more
