John Adams: City Noir, Saxophone Concerto – review
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Has John Adams gone soft? No: judging by City Noir, a 35-minute symphonic soundscape, he has simply expanded the vocabulary of American music, combining the Californian film industry’s polyglot aesthetic with his own virtuoso orchestral technique.
The score, teeming with competing urban timbres, is jazzy in rhythm and easy to listen to, but hardly a masterpiece. The playfully smoochy Saxophone Concerto, classically inspired, is more original and much more atmospheric.
Adams demonstrates how well he understands the instrument, and McAllister how well he can play it. Excellent performances from the St Louis orchestra under Robertson, who is so much more at home in the American idiom than with European classics.
John Adams
City Noir, Saxophone Concerto
Timothy McAllister/St Louis Symphony/David Robertson
(Nonesuch)
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