San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas, John Adams – Adams: Absolute Jest & Grand Pianola Music (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas, John Adams – Adams: Absolute Jest & Grand Pianola Music (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 57:30 minutes | 1,90 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SFS Media

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony offer the world-premiere recording of John Adams’ Absolute Jest, commissioned by the orchestra, alongside the composer’s Grand Pianola Music, another SFS commission from 30 years earlier, conducted here by the composer. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony join forces with America’s most-performed living composer, John Adams, in a colossal album featuring Adams’s Absolute Jest and Grand Pianola Music. Hear Adams’s inspired and witty take on Beethoven’s spirited scherzos in this first-ever recording of his SFS- commissioned Absolute Jest. Also featured is Grand Pianola Music, with its tongue-in-cheek allusions to Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, written for and premiered by the SFS. Both works speak to the deeply personal and vital relationship of some of the top musicians of our time: John Adams, MTT, and the SFS.

Performed by the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, great champions of John Adams’ music all around, this album pairs the Grand Pianola Music, one of the early fruits of Adams’ expansion of the minimalist language, with a newly commissioned work, Absolute Jest. The pairing is logical, for both works quote the music of Beethoven, but it is the latter work that makes news here. The title may refer to David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest, but it also suggests the substance of the work: humor raised to an abstract principle. The work is essentially a concerto for string quartet and orchestra, and its raw material comes from several Beethoven quartets, but most thoroughly the last one, the String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135. The work is explicitly funny (Beethoven even writes the words “Must it be? It must be!” over the main rhythmic elements of the finale), and Adams preserves the humor. But he also builds large structures out of the Beethovenian moves, expanding the points at which the music gets harmonically “stuck,” exploiting the contrast between string quartet and orchestra, and generally combining rigorous development with extreme high spirits. There are apparently those who would like a more elevated statement from Adams at this point in his career, but note that the easy listening background vocals of the Grand Pianola Music (effortlessly rendered by pianists Marc-André Hamelin and Orli Shaham) faced the same kind of criticism. A great deal of fun, enthusiastically received by the Davies Symphony Hall audiences in these live 2013 recordings.–AllMusic Review by James Manheim

Tracklist:
01. St Lawrence String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas – Absolute Jest: Beginning (10:35)
02. St Lawrence String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas – Absolute Jest: Presto (03:30)
03. St Lawrence String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas – Absolute Jest: Lo stesso tempo (01:07)
04. St Lawrence String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas – Absolute Jest: Meno mosso (03:18)
05. St Lawrence String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas – Absolute Jest: Vivacissimo (01:49)
06. St Lawrence String Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomsas – Absolute Jest: Prestissimo (05:20)
07. Orli Shaham, Marc-André Hamelin, Synergy Vocals, San Francisco Symphony, John Adams – Grand Pianola Music: Part 1 (15:23)
08. Orli Shaham, Marc-André Hamelin, Synergy Vocals, San Francisco Symphony, John Adams – Grand Pianola Music: Part 1 – Slow (07:46)
09. Orli Shaham, Marc-André Hamelin, Synergy Vocals, San Francisco Symphony, John Adams – Grand Pianola Music: Part 2, On the Dominant Divide (08:39)

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