John Adams is a crowd-pleasing composer and as such depends on the large audiences of orchestral music for the musical dialogues in which he engages. Solo piano music didn't have the same kind of public when it came out, at least in the classical realm, and
Adams has not written a great deal of music for the piano. The four works presented here by Dutch pianist
Ralph van Raat are advertised as
Adams' complete piano music, and only one, Phrygian Gates, is among his most popular works. The album makes a real contribution, for it demonstrates how
Adams nevertheless worked on major compositional questions in his piano music; it is not a "byway" of his musical path. The works on the album date from between 1977 (Phrygian Gates and China Gates) and 2001 (American Berserk). They all in one way or another attest to
Adams' success in incorporating a range of Romantic gestures into a minimalist language, a potent combination indeed that is fully accessible to anybody yet never lapses into sentimentality. He translates the combination into pianistic terms, with sweeping passages of repeated figures that ebb and flow as they offer the pianist something to work at. The four works are entirely different in personality, and American Berserk is an especially vivid manifestation of
Adams' use of vernacular musical languages -- it abstracts the rhythms and textures of boogie woogie in a satisfying, colorful ride.
Van Raat's approach emphasizes the neo-Romantic elements in
Adams' music and provides a distinctively Continental interpretation that seems to suggest a continuing rise in and geographical diffusion of
Adams' reputation.