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John Adams: A mind composed of quick curiosity
Eclectic artist riffs on roads, Eisenhower, his novel and, oh yes, his music
by Philip Kennicott As far as I know, my father never met
Ezra Pound. It becomes necessary to point this out during a two-hour supper with composer John Adams because, well, Adams asked. The Ezra Pound question will give you
a good sense of how a conversation with Adams, one this country’s most distin- guished and most talented artists, flows. It is, to mix several metaphors, a free- verse fugue in multiple acts, a dance amid the clinking of forks, and unlike anything most journalists experience on regular duty. “Apropos of nothing, but we were speaking of archi- tects,” he begins, segueing from a discussion of paint- ers. “I was down in L.A. to hear my new piece, and I was sitting next to Frank Gehry. People from the Phil- harmonic kept coming up to Gehry, and Frank would say, ‘How come that door’s open up there?’ ‘Why aren’t those lights on?’ ” Adams has a good-natured laugh, and he indulges it heartily at the thought of the world’s most famous architect, sit- ting in the concert hall he designed for the Los Ange- les Philharmonic, still fuss- ing and fretting over details of a building that opened more than seven years ago. Artists, if they’re smart, learn to let go. Gehry, I point out, is de- signing the new Eisenhow- er Memorial in Washington. “Eisenhower?” asks Adams. He pauses for a moment. “He got us out of Korea. And he built $800 billion worth of high- ways. You know what that did to public transportation in this country? Perma-
CD REVIEW From EMI, a fine sampling of Wagnerian soprano Flagstad by Joe Banno
For many opera fans, soprano Kirsten Flagstad remains the gold standard of Wagnerian sing- ing, even a half-century after her death. The new five-CD box set in EMI’s “Icon” series concentrates on records she made from 1948 to 1952, when her voice had taken
on a weightier, mezzo-like col- oring and the upper register had ever so slightly tightened. She was well into her 50s dur- ing these EMI sessions, but her rock-solid technique and the en- during beauty of her instrument ensured performances that sound remarkably fresh. The overwhelming impression in these CDs — which range in
characteristic Flagstad repertoire from baroque arias to Norwegian songs to German lieder, along- side her signature Wagner roles — is of an incomparable voice, used with scrupulous musician- ship. The column of glowing tone she produces, the remarkable breath control, the gleaming high notes and ocean-deep tone of her chest voice, the spirited attacks
on phrases and exquisitely shad- ed dynamics — all these are things of wonder. Flagstad never overstated the
drama in her singing, which led some to deem her interpretations stately, even matronly-sounding. Yet hearing the eagerness and smiling radiance in her Grieg songs or her almost athletically exuberant reading of Strauss’s
Disney and CAMERON
MACKINTOSH present
“Caecilie,” it’s hard to fathom criticisms of dramatic detach- ment. This was an artist who sang in true bel canto fashion, ex- pressing emotion by subtly ma- nipulating the vocal line and ac- centing the text, rather than by breaking the line with melodra- matic effects. Her imperious- ness in “Isolde’s Curse” (one of sev- eral excerpts here from the legendary “Tristan und Isol- de” she recorded under Wilhelm Fürtwangler’s ba- ton in 1952), and the tragic weight she brings to the Brunnhilde-Sieg- mund duet from Act 2 of “Die Wal- küre” (with her reli- able, late-career stage partner, tenor Set Svanholm), register strikingly. And just as memorable are the arrested-time serenity in her Wagner Wesendonck-Lieder (with pianist Gerald Moore) and
Kirsten Flagstad
the devotional warmth she radi- ates in arias from Bach and Han- del oratorios. This “Icon” box is certainly not the whole picture. Flagstad’s stu- dio recordings of the 1920s and ’30s and her live-broadcast per- formances from the Met, Covent Garden and La Sca- la are indispens- able, as are the riv- eting, complete Acts 1 and 3 of Wag- ner’s “Die Walküre” that she recorded in blazing early stereo for Decca in the mid-1950s (most re- cently available on CD from Decca’s Australian subsid- iary label, Elo- quence). But these EMI recordings are a fine introduction
to a truly golden-age singer who, especially in Wagner, has never been equaled.
style@washpost.com Joe Banno is a freelance writer.
nently ruined it. That was a juggernaut of the auto industry, the tire industry and the oil industry, and it killed the rail- roads.” There ensues a brief exchange about the American romance with highways. Without it, “we wouldn’t have ‘On the
Road,’ “ agrees Adams, mentioning Jack Kerouac, whose novel “Big Sur” was the inspiration for an Adams piece called “The Dharma at Big Sur.” I mention my father, a great lover of highways, who was born in Idaho, where the land is large and highways deeply a part of the rural culture. “Really? Idaho?” asks Adams. He is de- lighted. Adams is often delighted by little things, details of place, odd connections between people.
“Did he know Ezra VIDEO ON THE WEB
Watch a time-lapse
sketch of John Adams by staff artist Patterson Clark created with the Brushes app on the iPad. See its development at
washingtonpost.com/ style.
Pound?” Only after tran- scribing our conversation do I realize that Ezra Pound, who spent the dark years of World War II rhapsodizing for Mussolini in Italy, and the postwar years locked up in Washington’s very own St. Elizabeths Hos- pital, was born in Ida- ho. Who knew? Ad- ams, who says he spends his down- time reading lit- erature, knew. Adams was in town last month for an
intense musical residency sponsored by the Kennedy Center. He conducted the National Symphony Or- chestra — including one of the best performances it has given in years — and met with folks from the Wash- ington National Opera and the Library of Congress. The library presented him with a letter he had written to Leonard Bernstein more than 40 years ago, chastis-
ing the older composer for not being suf- ficiently avant-garde. “I hadn’t seen the letter since 1966,” Adams says. Bernstein wrote him back, but Adams had long since lost the re-
sponse. But seeing his own letter again, decades later, prompted this reflection: “I was ragging on him with the exact same language that my son, who is 24 (and a very, very talented composer), is ragging on me. The same criticism. It was almost eerie.” Another hearty laugh. This centers the
conversation, at the Italian restaurant Teatro Goldoni on K Street NW (mush- room risotto and two glasses each of Cha- lone Vineyard pinot noir), for a consider- able span. Adams is deeply interested in the broader musical dimensions of cul- ture, how pop music and classical music coexist and sometimes cross-fertilize, how composers need audience feedback, how musical generations succeed one
also maintains an eclectic blog, Hell Mouth, where his entries run from eru- dite discussions of Edward Elgar’s me- lodic lines to surreal divagationsabout politics and culture. “Anger is building nationwide over
Gustavo Dudamel’s slow reaction to the catastrophic BP oil leak,” reads one of Adams’s Onion-style posts. Dudamel, the talented young Venezuelan conductor who was leading the L.A. Philharmonic when Adams ran into Gehry, has been lionized to almost absurd proportions by marketers and music lovers desperate for a new face. Dudamel is “the One” — and obviously he has nothing to do with oil spills. “My publisher asked me for a book of
essays about how we listen to music,” Ad- ams says. “I realized that the best way to do this was through fiction. My character is a kind of composer, but he’s not a com- poser like me. He’s very much the image of what a serious composer should be.” You have to know classical music to understand this remark. By “serious” composer, Adams means someone who writes stringently mathematical and intellectually “rigorous” music, the kind of composer who reigned su- preme over the tiny audiences gath- ered in academe 30 or 40 years ago. By this standard, Adams would be a com- poser of fluff, even though his music is beautifully crafted, endlessly engaging and has won over audiences through- out the world. His novel’s character, this “serious” composer, has a son who is a rock-and- roll guy. Conflict ensues. “That bitter antipathy between gen-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PATTERSON CLARK/THE WASHINGTON POST
another and how some artists will fight quixotic battles to their dying day, hold- ing true to avant-garde orthodoxy no matter how isolating it is. The story of classical music in America is for Adams a grand narrative that is still unfolding. “You’ll blanch when I tell you this,” Ad-
ams says. “I’m actually working on a nov- el.”
I don’t blanch. Adams isn’t just one of this country’s greatest composers,he is also a fluent and entertaining writer. His memoir, “Hallelujah Junction,” is an American bildungsroman and paints a vivid picture of what it’s like to be a mas- ter of a marginal, European art form in a democratic society that produces great torrents of seductive musical junk. He
erations,” he summarizes. “The colli- sion of culture in this country.” I remind Adams that there is a new movie coming out, “I Am Love,” which uses his music, and that we should talk about it because that was the os- tensible purpose for our supper. “Here’s the story: I received a completely unexpected e-mail from Tilda Swinton about a year and a half ago, describ- ing the film and saying that they had already shot it and
were editing it and the director had dis- covered my music and used it through- out the film. They were terrified that I might not like the film and wouldn’t al- low them to use it.” But he did, and the film, by Italian di-
rector Luca Guadagnino, arrives in local theaters this Friday, complete with a soundtrack featuring Adams’s “Shaker Loops,” a 1978 score inspired, in part, by the austere religious sect.To this accom- paniment, Swinton has one of the most epic, non-X-rated sex scenes ever com- mitted to film. “My wife saw it and said, ‘Oh I am so happy they got to the end of the scene when they did,’ ” says Adams.
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