Grand Pianola Music was commissioned by the General Atlantic Corporation and David M. Ramsey. The work was premiered on February 26, 1982, by the San Francisco Symphony. But Grand Pianola Music genuinely upset people, doubtless due to the bombastic finale, “On the Dominant Divide,” with its flag-waving, gaudy tune rocking back and forth between the pianos amid ever-increasing cascades of B-flat major arpeggios. The Final Chorale - Five Orchestral Pieces. When Grand Pianola Music was first performed in New York (in 1982 in a festival of contemporary music organized and conducted by the composer Jacob Druckman) the audience response included a substantial and (to me) shocking number of “boos.” True, it was a very shaky performance, and the piece came at the end of a long concert of new works principally by serialist composers from the Columbia-Princeton school. Mail But it was never intended, as has since been intimated, as a “political” statement about the state of “new music.” Nevertheless, I was alarmed by the severity of its reception, and for years I found myself apologizing for it (“I’ve got to take that piece down behind the barn and shoot it”). In the early 1980s, John Adams’s “Grand Pianola Music” defied the seriousness of classical music. Stephen Mosko, conductor [Place of publication not identified] : Angel Records, 2005 publisher catalog number CRD3335 Print version: Adams, John, 1947-Grand pianola music. Unable to add item to Wish List. The principle technique of the piano writing was suggested to me by the behavior of tape and digital delays, where a sound can be repeated electronically in a fraction of a second. Mar 15, 2017 - Explore Stephanie Lynn's board "Pianos" on Pinterest. Enjoy the sound of a world-class Grand Piano where notes are played using your computer's keyboard or mouse. Performed at the Centennial Concert November 9, 2012 in the St. Francis Auditorium, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The recordings are live concerts and the discs are SACD/CD. The piece is conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas with spunk, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet is guest. Beethoven, un détour pour aller de John Adams à John Adams, ou du pareil au même. Grand PIanola Music is one of Adams' ground breaking pieces that originally put him on the map 30+ years ago. Grand Pianola Music is in two parts, the first being in fact two movements joined together without pause. Despite the image that inspired it, and despite the heft of its instrumentation, Grand Pianola Music is, for the most part, a surprisingly delicate piece. Adams - Grand Pianola Music “Dueling pianos, cooing sirens, Valhalla brass, thwacking bass drums, gospel triads, and a Niagara of cascading flat keys all learned to cohabit as I wrote the piece.” Adams said. The shorter second part, "On the Dominant Divide," was an experiment in applying my minimalist techniques to the barest of all possible chord progressions, I-V-I. Seriously Great Music - Modern but Listenable, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 16, 2015. It begins with a leisurely fabric of dappled woodwinds and pianos that slowly evolves in the typical “gradual process” manner of Minimalist pieces of that era. The Daily Telegraph’s Damian Thompson wrote, “[…]The highlight was John Adams’s Grand Pianola Music. Le scherzo beethovénien devait être ce qui fait avancer l'œuvre, ce qui lui confère sa dynamique, comme le motif de la marche Funèbre irrigue les Métamorphoses straussiennes ; il s'avère être un boulet. Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2016, Holy sufferin’ catfish, the world ain’t ready for this! About this Performance. Bien entendu, Adams n'est pas le premier à composer d'après Beethoven ' on pense au Richard Strauss des Métamorphoses, Richard Strauss : Les Quatre derniers Lieder - Mort et Transfiguration - Métamorphoses. View the Product: Grand Pianola Music - Full Score, Series: Full Score, Medium/Format: Softcover, Contributors: John Adams Neither mashup nor mush, John Adams' borrowing and adapting Beethoven's scherzos from last quartets and recognizable elements from symphony and sonata are in respectful play and amusement. Hindemith /Stravinsky / Weil : 20th Century Music, dirigé par Michael Tilson-Thomas, car il avait été, je cite, « stimulé par la manière dont Stravinsky avait absorbé des artefacts musicaux du passé et les avait intégrés à son propre langage hautement personnel ». , c'en est une autre de composer une pièce dont chaque note lutte bien en vain avec les œuvres d'exception dont elle tire son matériau, œuvres que l'auditeur a bien en tête sous leur forme originelle. Of these the second is a slow serene pasture with grazing tuba. In fact, any attempt to pigeon hole his music is pointless as it really doesn't fit neatly into any particular category. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Quintette Avec Clarinette. Un des atouts de la musique signée par Beethoven est sa densité : si on ressasse ce qui passe en un éclair dans la section centrale du second mouvement du quatuor op. I was reminded of walking down the hallways of the San Francisco Conservatory, where I used to teach, hearing the sonic blur of twenty or more pianos playing Chopin, the Emporer Concerto, Hanon, Rachmaninoff, the Maple Leaf Rag and much more.