John Adams' music has long attracted the admiration of listeners for its inimitable American qualities. City Noir was inspired by the cultural and social history of Los Angeles.
Adams called it "an imaginary movie score" that evokes a terse, melodramatic and menacing soundscape. Fearful Symmetries is an example of Adams' steamroller-like rhythms that are endlessly inventive in their shifts of timbre, texture and color. The album ends with a work dedicated to Marin Alsop, a capricious "Spider Dance" of memorable rhythmic drive.
On this CD:
John Adams:
City Noir
Fearful Symmetries
Girls of the Golden West - Lola Montez does the Spider Dance
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop, conductor