John Adams – Son of a chamber Symphony & string quartet FLAC

International Contemporary Ensemble.
St. Lawrence String Quartet.
John Adams (conductor)

http://www.allmusic.com/album/john-adams-son-of-chamber-symphony-string-quartet-mw0002138709

Son of a Chamber Symphony

Movement 1 8:45
Movement 2 7:44
Movement 3 7:30

String quartet

Movement 1 21:30
Movement 2 8:49

Commissioned by Stanford University, Carnegie Hall and the San Francisco Ballet. First concert performance: November 30, 2007, Stanford University, Alarm Will Sound conducted by Alan Pierson. Choreographed version (titled Joyride) by Mark Morris, first performed by San Francisco Ballet, April 23, 2008.

Just as John Adams’s 1992 Chamber Symphony was written in the shadow of Schoenberg’s Op 9 work of the same name, so, as the title suggests, Son of Chamber Symphony from 15 years later takes Adams’s own previous work as its starting point. That familial relationship seems strongest in the first movement, where the tangy sonorities, jostling instrumental lines and sudden changes of direction recall the similarly muscular opening of its predecessor. As the work goes on, the music moves into territory that Adams has explored in his more recent work, but the virtuoso lightness of the instrumental writing remains, and with its self-references to earlier works (Nixon in China and Harmonielehre) it is a real jeux d’esprit, genuinely approachable and wittily engaging. By contrast, the 2008 String Quartet, a rare example of Adams using a traditional title, not only seems as introspective as Son of Chamber Symphony is outward-looking, but also harks back to an earlier, more obviously minimalist phase in his development, even if from time to time the churning textures give way to kernels of more lyrical writing. Both works are given exactly the kind of high-octane performance.

Link removed 31/08/17

Hope you enjoy. Please comment or add rep if you download. Happy listening. 🙂