The performances on this two-disc set, Flowering Tree, which includes extensive liner notes and the complete libretto, were recorded at the Barbican Center, London, in August 2007, with the London Symphony Orchestra and th... more »e same vocalists who performed in Vienna.« less
The performances on this two-disc set, Flowering Tree, which includes extensive liner notes and the complete libretto, were recorded at the Barbican Center, London, in August 2007, with the London Symphony Orchestra and the same vocalists who performed in Vienna.
"While I enjoyed this opera tremendously when I saw it in Chicago, and this is a very good recording, the included booklet/libretto is completely messed up. The booklet contains two copies of the libretto of Act I, so you can't follow along with Act II. Nonesuch made a huge mistake in the typesetting and printing. I have contacted them, but they have not responded. It's a shame. This is a wonderful opera, but I wouldn't have purchased the media had I known the booklet was a total mess. I feel a bit cheated."
Nonesuch WILL send you a corrected booklet, without charge.
RENS | Dover, NH USA | 11/29/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I went to the Nonesuch website, contacted them as indicated on the site, explained the problem, and within a few days received a courteous e-mail apologizing for the misprinted booklet and explaining that they were reprinting the booklet correctly. A few weeks later I reveived the reprinted booklet, free of errors and free of charge. I hope that those who downgraded this release will go to the [...] website and write a courteous request for the reprinted booklet. As for why others got no reply to their complaints, all I can assume is that they did not go directly to the source on the Nonesuch site.
By the way, I think this opera is yet another masterpiece from one of American's finest living composers. Adams is perhaps our finest composer overall, given the variety and depth (both intellectual and emotional) of his works as well as their appeal to the human ears. Certainly the many performances of his works all over the world suggest that he is. Only in the USA are his compositions relatively rarely performed. Now that the MET has finally, after all these years, recognized him with "Dr. Atomic" and plans a production of "Nixon in China", perhaps we will get to hear and see more of his works in concert halls and opera houses.
I highly recommend his recent autobiography,Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life and the informative The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer. Also well done and greatly to be ejoyed are the DVD studies of his life and music, Hail Bop! A Portrait of John Adams and John Adams - A Portrait and a Concert of American Music. Also available and highly recommended are the DVDs of his earlier operas: The Death of Klinghoffer, in a British film version Adams - Death of Klinghoffer / Randle, Sylvan, Howard, Maltman, Boutros, Melrose, Bickley, LSO and El Nino, which is rather a staged oratorio than an opera as such. We are still waiting for a DVD of "Nixon in China" , his first and most performed opera. It is still available on CD: Nixon in China. When we finally get in on DVD, I bet it will come from the Netherlands, Switzerland, or Great Britain.
John Adams and Steve Reich, along with Christopher Rouse and others, have finally overcome the decades long tyranny of the notion that classical music is to be written by academic composers for a coterie of other academic composers rather than for greater audiences, music determined by chance or mathematics, often elegant on the page, even more often ugly to the ear and anxiety producing to the psyche.
For the record, lest I be mistaken for a musical Philistine into classical music "lite" with easy tunes to hum, I think that the 20th Century's great operas include Berg's "Wozzeck" and "Lulu" and Schoenberg's "Moses und Aron." - along with the operas of Janacek, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Britten. And, yes, let's do some humming: "Porgy and Bess" and "Trouble in Tahiti" and "Candide."
In any case, Nonesuch will gladly send you a new booklet with the complete libretto of "A Flowering Tree." Just go to the label's website and request it."
Most Romantic Adams yet
Jeff Dunn | Alameda, California United States | 10/07/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The shimmering beauty of the music, the magical Tamil tale of transformative love vs. adversity, and the exceptional performances all make John Adams' opera/oratorio "A Flowering Tree" one of his best releases yet.
A flood of antipodal cultural references washes through the music. Adams' minimalist upbringing barely shows. To create some tonal exoticism, most of Act I seems to be in a medieval mixolydian mode (a scale sounding like G to G on the piano's white keys). The melodic lines are more emotive, the orchestration more transparent, the style positivistic in evoking the sound of previous composers.
The opening notes are transporting. Taking Wagner's woodbird music accompaniment from Siegfried and pasting on it a low melody in a peculiar doubling, Adams conjures up the Sibelius of the Sixth Symphony. Later, in highly accented, simply phrased, fortissimo choral passages, the shade of Carl Orff Carmina-izes. During the wedding music, slashing strings typical of the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara are heard. At the beginning of Act II, blatantly Wagnerian horn phrases burst out. Yet all these Western and Nordic references are carefully immersed in genetic Adams: No harm, no postmodern foul.
At times in other works, Adams emotive self is so standoffish you want to shake him. Not so here. Along with "My Father Knew Charles Ives," "Nixon in China," and, yes, "Ceiling ... Sky," this is my favorite Adams so far.
"
So-so, but better than Atomic
Michael Suh | 01/03/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"A Flowering Tree isn't John Adams's best opera, but it's certainly better than Dr. Atomic (though the Atomic Symphony is pretty good). It's pleasant and the libretto is less jagged than Atomic's, but not a whole heck of a lot of content like there is in Klinghoffer and especially in Nixon in China.
A couple things really irk me about this opera. Why are the choruses in Spanish? It makes sense in El Nino, where the Spanish is from the original texts, but here's it just pretentious.
And that "monkey chant" chrous in the second half, supposedly one of the highlights of the opera, is absurd. A group of British singers imitating nasal Indonesian monkey chant in Spanish while using the backdrop of an Indian folktale? Is he serious? It's pan-globalism run amok.
Adams's choral works post-El Nino have been a string of disappointments -- really just an exploration of the musical hinterlands and not in a good way. His orchestral works on the other hand, have been getting better and better.
This recording presents the opera in the best light possible, but it still can't save itself from the spiritual self-importance Adams clearly plunks into the work. It's a good occasional listen, but A Flowering Tree is definitely not entering the standard repertoire anytime soon."
Track Listings (3) - Disc #1
