Orchestral
CD and Other Review

Review: John Adams: Absolute Jest (San Francisco Symphony)

This new recording on the San Francisco Symphony’s own label presents two works written three decades apart by American composer John Adams. Although Adams is most commonly associated with Minimalist compositional techniques, these are only very obliquely in evidence in this world premiere recording of Absolute Jest (2013 Most unusually, the work is scored for string quartet with symphony orchestra – “pretty much a repertory black hole,” as Adams notes dryly. This piece takes as its starting points phrases from late Beethoven string quartets, predominantly Op. 131, 135, and the Große Fuge (Op. 133), weaving them into “a colossal 25-minute scherzo” with orchestral elaborations, digressions and counterpoints, and nods to other Beethoven works. “Absolute Jest is playful, in the literal sense of scherzo as joke, but it is by no means lightweight”  It’s hugely playful, in the literal sense of scherzo as joke/jest, but it is by no means lightweight, flippant or ironic. Rather, it’s a vivacious, lively homage, a recent example in a long line of composers (including Brahms and Stravinsky, to name but two) looking back and ‘sampling’ the work of their forebears in order to create new and exciting compositions.  Absolute Jest is paired here with a…

November 18, 2015