Leila Josefowicz / St. Louis Symphony / David Robertson JOHN ADAMS Violin Concerto

Nonesuch releases a new recording of John Adams's Grawemeyer Award–winning Violin Concerto (1993) with his frequent collaborators violinist Leila Josefowicz, conductor David Robertson, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on April 27, 2018. The album was recorded at Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis in 2016.

Adams's Violin Concerto was co-commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the New York City Ballet. It was described by the Boston Globe as having "the qualities of intelligence, craftsmanship, and quirkiness that have always marked the composer and his work; this time Adams also mingles virtuoso show with soul, popular appeal with the staying power that comes from intellectual interest." The premiere recording of the work, featuring violinist Gidon Kremer and the London Symphony Orchestra led by Kent Nagano, was released by Nonesuch in 1996.

Josefowicz said of the concerto in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "It was the piece where [Adams] first got to know me as a person and a player, when I was twenty-one. I'm now thirty-eight. When I started playing this piece, it was the confirmation of the new path that I was on, to really go down this new road with new music and with composers, because this experience was so inspiring for me." She further said, "It has a really dancelike feeling, so the violin line is often incredibly syncopated with everything else going on in the orchestra … Basically, it's supposed to make you groove."

Leila Josefowicz / David Robertson / St. Louis Symphony JOHN ADAMS Scheherazade.2

Violence against women is no modern tragedy. Composer John Adams found that out when he saw an exhibition about the tales of the Arabian Nights — ancient stories in which Scheherazade tells her murderous husband a new tantalizing tale each night for 1001 nights, thus sparing her life a day at a time. The composer, writing in Scheherazade.2's booklet notes, says he was surprised by how many of the stories included women suffering brutality.

That got Adams thinking about "the many images of women oppressed or abused or violated that we see today in the news on a daily basis." Now, Adams has updated Scheherazade's disturbing story in a 50-minute piece for violin and orchestra.

Borrowing a formula from Hector Berlioz (with a nod to Scherherazade, Rimsky-Korsakov's popular symphonic suite), Adams created a "dramatic symphony," casting the violin as a modern-day Scheherazade — the smart woman who remains fearless in the face of cruelty. Over the course of four movements, no precise narrative is spelled out, yet Adams' descriptive titles and his cinematic music go a long way in unfolding a potent drama, masterfully illuminated by conductor David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

It begins with a strum of harp strings, the whoosh of winds and the clatter of a cimbalom (hammered dulcimer), as if a brightly colored curtain is swept back, inviting listeners inside. Here, we meet Scheherazade in the form of violinist Leila Josefowicz, a longtime Adams collaborator and courageous champion of new music, who gives a searing performance. She arrives with handsome, sinuous lines but later speaks in spikier gestures. In its lyrical moments, backed by Adams' lush orchestration, the music recalls Samuel Barber's beloved Violin Concerto.

The vibrant pulsations that open the second movement, "A Long Desire (Love Scene)," give way to a dreamy oasis of floating strings and flickering winds. Scheherazade enters sweet and high as the music grows more impassioned. Her winding, sensual song, one of the work's highlights, is backed by a delicate scrim of strings.

"Scheherazade And The Men With Beards," the disruptive third movement, finds our heroine trading arguments with a council of agitated strings, chattering winds and percussion. Her entreaties are mellifluous and articulate, but the opposition overpowers her with snarling brass and thunderous drums.

In "Escape, Flight, Sanctuary," Scheherazade makes her getaway amid an outburst of brass. Then she's off and running in frenzied bowing, with wind figures rushing to catch up. The fierceness and vulnerability Josefowicz expresses contributes to an award-caliber performance. Finally, palatial walls of Sibelius-like string textures enfold Scheherazade. She's found refuge, but who knows how safe she really is? (Tom Huizenga)

Ensemble Intercontemporain UNSUK CHIN Akrostichon - Wortspiel

In 2004, Korean-born composer Unsuk Chin pulled off what might seem impossible -- she won the prestigious Grauemeyer Award for her Violin Concerto with no more representation in terms of commercial recordings than a single electro-acoustic piece included on an obscure compilation more than 10 years old. Commonly, to be awarded such a grand distinction, at least some presence in terms of recording is necessary, but the inherent qualities of Chin's music prevailed. If Chin felt somewhat slighted before about the lack of availability of her music on disc, Deutsche Grammophon's Unsuk Chin: Akrostichon-Wortspiel more than makes up for it. Here are four of her works, Akrostichon-Wortspiel (1991-1993), Fantaisie mécanique (1994-1997), Xi (1997-1998), and the Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble (2002), in splendiferous performances by the Ensemble InterContemporain under Kazushi Ono, Patrick Davin, David Robertson, and Stefan Asbury. 

Chin speaks the language of European avant-garde as to the manner born, but does something with it that sets her apart from her peers, demonstrating absorption of pertinent musical ideas long forgotten or abandoned by most of them. Akrostichon-Wortspiel, sung with uncanny virtuosity by Finnish soprano Piia Komsi, features a vocal line that combines a quirky approach to melody with the verbal concretism associated with Dada and sets it to an appropriately wacky instrumental complement. Chin stated, "my music is a reflection of my dreams," and indeed, Fantaisie mécanique is like a dream about a complex gadget made of innumerable gears and cogs taking itself apart, as in a Quay Brothers animation. Xi is scored for chamber ensemble and electronics, and is scored so lightly that it is impossible to tell where one starts and the other ends. The opening of the Double Concerto contains no electronics, but one would swear that they are there, so diaphanous and elusive is the texture. The tonal language of the Double Concerto is reminiscent of impressionism, and the sound of it, like that of Akrostichon-Wortspiel, is strangely "sexy" in a way that defies explanation. 

Unsuk Chin: Akrostichon-Wortspiel is not for those who turn to music to seek repose and relaxation. Yet for those who like a challenge and intellectual stimulation, this is like a seven-course meal. Let us hope this is not the last we will hear from Unsuk Chin. (Uncle Dave Lewis)