For Lou Harrison

From the ecstatic flourishes that open the work like some great, multi-tiered Polynesian flower, listeners can tell they are in the rarefied sonic world of Alaska-based composer John Luther Adams in his New World Records release For Lou Harrison. This features the Brobdingnagianially named Callithumpian Consort of the New England Conservatory under the direction of Stephen Drury. For Lou Harrison, completed in 2004, is the third and final part of a trilogy of memorial works that Adams has composed for his parents: Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing for his father; In the White Silence for his mother; and this work for the man who was in many ways Adams' "musical" parent, Lou Harrison. It is scored for a string quartet, string orchestra, and two pianos, reserving a very prominent role for duo pianists Yukiko Takagi and Keith Kirchoff. The overall effect created by this ensemble of ensembles is as a blend working toward a single-minded purpose, rather than within a solo and ripieno context or as a dialogue between sections. It is radiantly beautiful music, which begins unexpectedly forte, changing dynamic perspectives relative to a sense of foreground versus background rather than going from loud to soft, often operating on a three-dimensional plane.
Adams has an uncanny instinct for dramatic development within such massed, long-form, and largely sustained structures. At one point toward the end of "Letter H," just when you think the tension in the sustained string chords is getting a little too congested, it breaks off -- just for a beat or two, but long enough to give the music time to grab a breath and continue. While the sound of the Balinese gamelan, an obvious point of reference for Harrison, is an important component in For Lou Harrison, it is not a point of departure; the work has a more personal correspondence with Harrison going for it than that. Rather than merely imitating the sounds that Harrison favored, Adams creates and seamlessly winds together a number of textural complexes that evoke harmonic combinations familiar from Harrison's relentless font of pan-Pacific modalities; at times, it's like listening to a glorious California sunset.
Although For Lou Harrison is a continuous, 63-minute work, New World wisely divides it into nine handy access points to make it accessible to listeners who might need to set it aside and return to it. Drury's performance of the piece is exceedingly careful and as patient as Lou Harrison wanted his musicians to be when playing a low-rung instrument in his gamelan orchestra; the performance unfolds extremely naturally and has properties of warmth, not to mention a sense of gravity befitting what is after all a memorial. However, it is a memorial for a composer whose work is typified by spontaneity and joy; to have pulled together all of these conflicting kinds of emotional states and musically related memories into a structure that embodies all of these qualities shows just what kind of stuff John Luther Adams is made of. Adams' work here operates at one of the highest levels of concentration and sheer beauty to be found in new music, and anyone who cares about whether contemporary classical music has a future should listen to For Lou Harrison.