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While listening to this disc of Rachmaninov and Adams, I was reminded of Antonio Pappano's 2006 recording of Tristan and Isolde, and the heady balance between orchestra and voice that Pappano achieved.
Similarly here, the chorus and soloists stand beside, not above, the orchestra, and the whole is recorded in sumptuous, intoxicatingly overpowering sound: there is a strong sense of Wagnerian ecstasy in the opening performance of John Adams' Harmonium. The work was composed in 1981, at a time when the composer's style was moving from prescriptive minimalist trappings; the repeated motifs are still very much present, but they are more often a means to an end rather than the end itself.
Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra display commendable concentration in the lengthy passages of motivic repetition, providing a sonically shifting rhythmic base to each movement. In the second movement - Because I Could Not Stop for Death - the arched lines and lengthy crescendos carry a transcendent beauty, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus' slightly breathy tone complements the aural beauty with a vocal suggestion of innocence.
At the movement's conclusion, low strings, low brass and timpani rise menacingly from the depths, as the Rheingold's Prelude rises from its Eb chord, or as Verdi's double basses crescendo at Otello's Act Four entrance. In this immediate recording, the thrill is palpable; likewise at the arrival of the third movement's ecstatic Britten-esque brass motif. Soon the ear is engulfed in Wild Nights' flowing melodic lines: cascades of monumental slithering, throbbing at the fore and fading finally, in true Vltava style, into the ethereal, silent distance. The orchestral virtuosity is to be commended for so vividly depicting Emily Dickinson's erotically-charged poem, the percussion and brass surging particularly stirringly.
Just as Adams' composition derives from poems by Dickinson and John Donne, Rachmaninov's The Bells takes as its inspiration a Russian version of a work by Edgar Allen Poe. The performance here could be yet more viscerally thrilling, but it is once again excellently played and sung. Renée Fleming's vocal style can irritate some, and her slightly mannered use of portamento is present here, but she phrases beautifully. Karl Dent's tenor possesses a slightly mournful quality, making it theoretically unsuited to the Allegro's jubilant mood, but he delivers the language clearly and conquers the deceptively difficult vocal line. Victor Ledbetter's baritone, barring an occasionally cavernous vibrato, does wonders for the doom-laden Lento lugubre. The disc, as a whole, is a notable achievement.
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