When John Adams was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music for his September 11th memorial piece "On the Transmigration of Souls", he was expected to greet the honor with polite gratitude. Instead, he blasted the awards committee for ignoring "many, if not most of the country's greatest musical minds... in favor of academy composers" over the past 50 years, noting that they had failed to recognize popular figures Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson, pioneers like John Cage, or any jazz artists such as Thelonious Monk. Adams cares deeply about the state of American music past and present, and has always been a populist post-minimalist. Where his peers have turned to world or academic music for inspiration, he's comfortable referencing the sweeping pastorals of Aaron Copland, the jumbled marching-band Americana of Charles Ives, or the so-called "Jewish melancholy" embedded in the past century of New York art music. It is his unique style, as well as a tempering of any romanticized views of his country, that usually prevents these influences from carrying his music into realms of fluff and cheese.
Road Movies gathers piano pieces written throughout most of Adams' career (the selections were originally composed between 1977 and 2001). Unlike most of his peers, Adams' music has grown neither stagnant nor obtuse as he's aged, probably because he hasn't committed himself to a particular musical dogma. That's not to say that the works on Road Movies don't vary in quality; however, the two standout pieces, "Hallelujah Junction" and "Phrygian Gates", are both inspired compositions that stand as prime distillations of Adams' style.
1996's "Hallelujah Junction" is a vertiginous composition for two pianos, exhibiting the unbroken stream of consciousness apparent in Adams' best work. The music effortlessly flows from one rhythmic and harmonic figure to the next as each piano compels the other into new territory. After exploring grand pastoral beauty in movements I and II-- and hinting at various styles of folk and popular music along the way-- movement III loses itself in a frenzied, dissonant boogie. It's not the ending I'd have chosen, but when you've been composing for more than 20 years, I guess you get sick of transcendental finales. The composition recalls both Steve Reich's experiments in combining several instruments of the same timbre, as well as the shifting rhythmic fluidity driving Louis Andriessen's more frenetic works.
"Phrygian Gates" (1977) for solo piano is the piece that Adams considers his official "Opus I." It established a sound that would come to be recognized as uniquely his, attracting wide attention upon its release and unofficially challenging Philip Glass to the title of "world arpeggio overlord." It was written as Adams' attempt to evoke the constantly modulating, shifting structures of waves, which it does beautifully. Rolf Hind's interpretation on this recording, though less emotive than others, is admirable in its machinelike virtuosity. It masterfully highlights the subtle rhythmic shifts and angular transitions that lend resonance to the work's unique momentum.
Less exciting are "American Berserk" (2001) and the title piece (1995). "American Berserk" explores the chaos approached at the end of "Hallelujah Junction". Its Bartok-like application of folk rhythms to a disjointed and ferocious melodicism is interesting but on the whole, not very exciting. The title is taken from Philip Roth's American Pastoral, a phrase used to describe the "desperation of the counterpastoral" that confronts the book's characters through the realities of the Vietnam War. Given this context-- and the year of the piece's composition-- one can infer that "American Berserk" was most likely written in the months directly following 9/11, and it cannot help but resonate with the event. Like much of the reactionary art created during that period of initial shock, it is powerful in context but does not retain its impact independently, a fate avoided by the his distanced and thoughtful Pulitzer winner "On the Transmigration of Souls".
"Road Movies" is a piece for solo violin and piano, and while its second movement, "Meditative", is a quiet masterpiece, casting a fragile fog of empty fourths and fifths around a slight bluesy lilt, the first and last sections of the piece are underwhelming. Adams attempts to capture the frantic energy of bluegrass fiddling here, but the solo violin turns out to be a misjudgment of instrumentation. It doesn't have enough harmonic complexity to carry the force of its repetitive motives and static sixteenth notes against the percolating figures of the piano.
Still, this-- along with Shaker Loops & Phrygian Gates-- is a good place for those unfamiliar with Adams. Piano works serve as a good entry point when it comes to a composer such as John Adams, whose orchestral output might alienate some, many of whom could consider his classical works all pomp and circumstance.
