From Amazon.co.uk
Back in 1981,
Harmonium John Adams out as a major new voice in American music, and it's still high-octane listening today. Minimalism with an unashamedly romantic soul, these reflections on mortality have a truly existential dimension! The glowing choral writing of "Negative Love" captures the full-force of
John Donne's emotive musings. Adams respects the formality of
Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death", while the orchestra, with its subtle backdrop of gongs, vividly evokes the death-haunted scene. The setting of Dickinson's "Wild Nights" opens with a crescendo of breathtaking velocity, and the adrenaline keeps flowing until the coda's mood of fulfilled calm; the sense of space here would not sound out of place in Sibelius. De Waart's performance, made soon after the premi&agrav;re, captures the music's immediacy on the wing (a recent account by Robert Shaw and his Atlanta forces on Telarc sadly doesn't come close), reinforced by ECM's open sound-balance. At barely 32 minutes, this disc is short measure, but it's an essential purchase even so.
--Richard Whitehouse
