Doctor Atomic Symphony #2 best classical seller
Sep 08, 2009
A new Nonesuch CD of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony and “Guide to Strange Places” continues to receive strongly positive reactions. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Joshua Kosman writes "John Adams’ dark, urgent and brilliant “Doctor Atomic” Symphony, superbly recorded by the St. Louis Symphony under Music Director David Robertson, would seem to be a win-win undertaking for listeners."
In the first week of its release the album reached #2 in the Nielsen/Soundscan ratings, according to Billboard Magazine.
Robertson and his orchestra will tour the West Coast in February, repeating their virtuoso performances of the Doctor Atomic Symphony.
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Comments (4)
October 23, 2009
I am a frequent concert goer for the St. Louis Symphony and a John Adams fan. I bought this album as soon as I learned it was coming out. It has made many a trip back and forth to school entertaining. Although I don't know if its safe while listening to Doctor Atomic, I tend to sped a little when my adrenaline gets pumping...
October 24, 2009
I was greatly looking forward to the new album with Guide to strange Places and Dr Atomic Symphony - but while the recording is great, and I am very pleased to have it, I am very disappointed that the Symphony is obviously a revised/cut version of what we heard at the BBC Proms in London two years ago. I have a recording of that concert and the Symphony is about 45 minutes long. I wonder what led to the reduction in the score.
October 27, 2009
Will be attending the St. Lawrence String Quartet concert in Samueli Hall in the O.C..
Is there an existing recording of the 2008 String Quartet available? ... or ... Are there plans to issue a recorded performance of the String Quartet 2008?
Loved the NPR and PBS broadcasts of "City Noir"... Any plans for a recording of that work?
November 2, 2009
I haven't heard this symphony yet, but I have heard the opera and can imagine it — vividly. And I'm not at all surprised the recording is a bestseller as the music's "lush, polytonal, polyrhythmic score" is simply "gorgeous, powerful, and Wagnerian-symphonic-rich throughout," as I wrote in an atypical post on my blog (I don't normally do reviews of either performances or recordings) wherein I (pardon!) thoroughly trashed the opera qua opera after hearing it for the first time (on a broadcast of the Chicago Lyric Opera production); a post in which I begged the composer to (among two other alternatives) "chuck the present libretto altogether into the rubbish bin where it more properly belongs, and rework that glorious music into either an extended tone poem or three-movement dramatic symphony," because "[it] would be an aesthetic crime of the first magnitude to permit that music to remain hostage to the dead-weight libretto to which it's now wedded." You may be certain that immediately I leave here, I'll hie myself over to Amazon to order that CD.
Good to see your entrance into the classical music blogosphere, and my best wishes for success in this new venture.
ACD (A.C. Douglas)
http://www.soundsandfury.com/