Seattle Symphony / Ludovic Morlot JOHN LUTHER ADAMS The Become Trilogy

THE BECOME TRILOGY

 

Seattle Symphony / Ludovic Morlot DUTILLEUX Métaboles - L'Arbre des Songes - Symphony No. 2

                                  MÉTABOLES - L'ARBRE DES SONGES - LE DOUBLE

Seattle Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Become Desert

Become Desert is the much-anticipated sequel to Adams’ Pulitzer-winning Become Ocean, and a major milestone in the creative partnership between the composer and the Seattle Symphony with Ludovic Morlot.

For Adams, who has been called “one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century” by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, the 40-minute work completes a trilogy he hadn’t intended to write, and yet it emerges as one of his most expansive and consciousness-raising musical statements to date.

In 2010, Adams created musical streams both aurally and visually with Become River. He followed with Become Ocean, which divides the orchestra into three parts to create a vast sense of undulating space and rhythm. The 2014 recording by Morlot and the Seattle Symphony debuted atop the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart, and won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

With Become Desert, space is once again a fundamental compositional element, but on a larger scale, with five different ensembles moving at five different tempos. The work features a large orchestra and choir that are deployed as five ensembles that surround the audience.

Seattle Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Become Ocean

Awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music, Become Ocean is set to finally extricate John Luther Adams from the shadow of his near-namesake. In fact the two lie at polar ends of the post-minimal spectrum. JLA composes slowly evolving, monumental sound creations that seem somehow to emerge from the essence of the earth. His lifelong engagement with elemental forces and the power of nature stems from years living in the Alaskan wilderness, where he has evolved a ‘music of place’ grounded in its physical, cultural and spiritual attributes.

Surprising, therefore, that Adams’s recent composition is inspired by the sea rather than the earth. Become Ocean takes the sense of scale and space that captured the composer’s imagination when he first visited Alaska in the 1970s and applies it to the deep, dark and hidden depths of the oceans surrounding the Pacific Northwest.

This is not ersatz programmatic music, however. Adams’s ‘sonic geography’ is a by-product of what can only be described as a keenly felt musical osmosis. If ever an orchestra sounded like an immense sonic object, slowly floating across a vast area, then this must be it. Become Ocean is divided into six seven-minute segments, with each one forming a kind of slow-motion wave. Some of these waves swell up into enormous, thunderous crashes, as heard around the 21' and 35' marks, causing changes in the music’s environment – like shifting glaciers in a frozen sea. As if to demonstrate the connection, there’s also a DVD consisting of six oceanic images looped in sequence to the music.

Of course, a strong cautionary message lies behind Become Ocean. To quote the composer himself: ‘As the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.’ (Gramophone)

James Ehnes JAMES NEWTON HOWARD - AARON JAY KERNIS Violin Concertos BRAMWELL TOVEY Stream of Limelight

This program features the world premiere recordings of three works written for violinist James Ehnes. Familiar to movie fans the world over, James Newton Howard has composed over 120 film scores. Upon being commissioned to write a violin concerto, Howard admitted to feeling, ''thrilled, excited, expectant and ultimately terrified.'' Pulitzer Prize winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis first composed for Ehnes in 2007 and a few years later his Violin Concerto followed. Bramwell Tovey and James Ehnes's musical relationship dates back to 1990, and they have performed together countless times. Stream of Limelight gives James's incredible technique ample opportunity to dazzle, and is a superb finale to this fascinating album of new compositions.

Steven Osborne / BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot RAVEL Piano Concertos - FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain

Anyone who knows Steven Osborne's superlative set of Ravel's solo piano music (also on Hyperion) will be impatient to hear him in the concertos. It may seem perverse then to start with the other work on this disc, but Manuel de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain is anything but incidental padding. Longer than either of the concertos it is an outstanding companion, for the Frenchman was a key influence on Falla, while, with his Basque heritage, Ravel repeatedly turned to Spain for inspiration. Full of colour, both Osborne's poetry and his exceptional touch are to the fore, the sparkling cascades in the final movement being especially breathtaking. It is a pity, then, that the improvisatory motifs are demure rather than swooning seductively in the face of the wonderfully pungent horns of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Osborne and Ludovic Morlot generally play things similarly straight in both Ravel concertos, with every detail in place, a wonderful zest on the G major Concerto and suitably imposing bravura in the left-Hand Concerto. The absence of false sentimentality is admirable, though a little more fluidity would be welcome in places. Not that nuance is lacking. Osborne's curious (lack of) emphasis for some melody notes in the sublime long solo that opens the movement is not entirely convincing, but he elicits spine-tingling shadings of colour as the movement progresses, while the left hand sounds almost like a harp at times. Minor caveats aside, these are strong performances of a programme that bears repeated listening. (Christopher Dingle / BBC Music)