For their second album on the Analekta label, Kent Nagano and the OSM explore Korean composer Unsuk Chin's artistic landscape. Chin's music is modern in language, but lyrical in communicative power. The colour of her music might be explained by Chin's affinity for non-European music and by her occupation with electronic music. This recording principal work, the prestigious Grawemeyer award-winning Violin Concerto, Viviane Hagner shows an almost hauntingly masterful display of technique and artistry. Also on this CD, the iridescent Rocanà, a commission by Maestro Nagano.

Composed to a libretto by Amin Maalouf and premièred at Salzburg in 2000 in a production by Peter Sellars, L'Amour de loin was described by the New York Times as the Best New Work of the Year in 2000. Kaija Saariaho's first opera follows a 12th-century troubadour's search for love across a constantly changing theatrical landscape. This reinterpretation of the medieval narrative of the life of Jaufré Rudel tackles a number of highly topical themes: love from afar, the virtuality of ideal love and relations between East and West.

Composer Note:
Shaker Loops began as a string quartet with the title Wavemaker. At the time, like many a young composer, I was essentially unaware of the nature of those musical materials I had chosen for my tools. Having experienced a few of the seminal pieces of American Minimalism during the early 1970's, I thought their combination of stripped-down harmonic and rhythmic discourse might be just the ticket for my own unformed yearnings. I gradually developed a scheme for composing that was partly indebted to the repetitive procedures of Minimalism and partly an outgrowth of my interest in waveforms. The "waves" of Wavemaker were to be long sequences of oscillating melodic cells that created a rippling, shimmering complex of patterns like the surface of a slightly agitated pond or lake. But my technique lagged behind my inspiration, and this rippling pond very quickly went dry. Wavemaker crashed and burned at its first performance. The need for a larger, thicker ensemble and for a more flexible, less theory-bound means of composing became very apparent.
Fortunately I had in my students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music an ensemble willing to tryout new ideas, and with the original Wavemaker scrapped I worked over the next four months to pick up the pieces and start over. I held on to the idea of the oscillating patterns and made an overall structure that could embrace much more variety and emotional range. Most importantly the quartet became a septet, thereby adding a sonic mass and the potential for more acoustical power. The "loops" idea was a technique from the era of tape music where small lengths of prerecorded tape attached end to end could repeat melodic or rhythmic figures ad infinitum. (Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain is the paradigm of this technique.) The Shakers got into the act partly as a pun on the musical term "to shake", meaning either to make a tremolo with the bow across the string or else to trill rapidly from one note to another. The flip side of the pun was suggested by my own childhood memories of growing up not far from a defunct Shaker colony near Canterbury, New Hampshire. Although, as has since been pointed out to me, the term "Shaker" itself is derogatory, it nevertheless summons up the vision of these otherwise pious and industrious souls caught up in the ecstatic frenzy of a dance that culminated in an epiphany of physical and spiritual transcendence. This dynamic, almost electrically charged element, so out of place in the orderly mechanistic universe of Minimalism, gave the music its raison d'etre and ultimately led to the full realization of the piece. Shaker Loops continues to be one of my most performed pieces. There are partisans who favor the clarity and individualism of the solo septet version, and there are those who prefer the orchestral version for its added density and power. The piece has several times been choreographed and even enjoyed a moment of cult status in the movie Barfly, an autobiographical account of the poet Charles Bukowsky's down and out days on LA's Skid Row. In a famous scene Bukowsky (Mickey Rourke), having been battered and bloodied by his drunken girlfriend (Faye Dunaway) holes up in a flophouse room, writing poems in a fit of inspiration to the accompaniment of the insistent buzz of "Shaking and Trembling".
-- John Adams
John Adams on the Violin Concerto
The proposal to write a violin concerto came from the violinist Jorja Fleezanis, a close friend and enthusiastic champion of new music. Composers who are not string players are seriously challenged when it comes to writing a concerto, and close collaborations are the rule, as it was in this case. For those who have not played a violin or a cello, the physical relation of the turned-over left wrist and grasping fingers defies logic. Intervals that ought to be simple are awkward, while gestures that seem humanly impossible turn out to be rudimentary.
A concerto without a strong melodic statement is hard to imagine. I knew that if I were to compose a violin concerto I would have to solve the issue of melody. I could not possibly have produced such a thing in the 1980’s because my compositional language was principally one of massed sonorities riding on great rippling waves of energy. Harmony and rhythm were the driving forces in my music of that decade; melody was almost non-existent. The “News” aria in Nixon in China, for example, is less melody than it is declamation riding over what feels like the chords of a giant ukelele.
But in the early 1990’s, during the composition of The Death of Klinghoffer, I began to think more about melody. This was perhaps a result of being partially liberated by a new chromatic richness that was creeping into my sound, but it was more likely due to the need to find a melodic means to set Alice Goodman’s psychologically complex libretto.
As if to compensate for years of neglecting the “singing line,” the Violin Concerto (1993) emerged as an almost implacably melodic piece—a example of “hypermelody.” The violin spins one long phrase after another wihout stop for nearly the full thirty-five minutes of the piece. I adopted the classic form of the concerto as a kind of Platonic model, even to the point of placing a brief cadenza for the soloist at the traditional locus near the end of the first movement. The concerto opens with a long extended rhapsody for the violin, a free, fantastical “endless melody” over the regularly pulsing staircase of upwardly rising figures in the orchestra. The second movement takes a received form, the chaconne, and gently stretches, compresses, and transfigures its contours and modalities while the violin floats like a disembodied spirit around and about the orchestral tissue. The chaconne’s title, “Body through which the dream flows,” is a phrase from a poem by Robert Haas, words that suggested to me the duality of flesh and spirit that permeates the movement. It is as if the violin is the “dream” that flows through the slow, regular heartbeat of the the orchestral “body.”
The “Toccare” utilizes the surging, motoric power of Shaker Loops to create a virtuoso vehicle for the solo violin. After Jorja Fleezanis’s memorable premiere, many violinists have taken on the piece, and each has played it with his or her unique flair and understanding. Among them are Gidon Kremer (who made the first recording with the London Symphony), Vadim Repin, Robert McDuffie, Midori and, perhaps most astonishingly of all, Leila Josefowicz, who made the piece a personal calling card for years.
The Violin Concerto is dedicated to the memory of David Huntley, longtime enthusiast and great champion of my and much other contemporary music.

Cast of Characters
The Captain, bar
First Officer/"Rambo", b-bar
Swiss Grandmother/Austrian Woman/British Dancing Girl, ms
Molqui, t
Mamoud, bar
Leon Klinghoffer, bar
Omar, ms
Marilyn Klinghoffer, c
Choruses of Exiled Palestinians and Exiled Jews, etc.
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The Death of Klinghoffer, John Adams' second opera, takes as its subject the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. Again the concept for the opera was suggested by director Peter Sellars. The L.A. Opera shared the work's commission but never presented it.
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Synopsis
The Death of Klinghoffer is told in a very different style than Adams' previous opera, Nixon in China. While based on historical events, Klinghoffer does not always treat them in a traditionally narrative manner, and the events we see are not always those we expect. Several important events in the historical narrative--including Klinghoffer's death itself--are not seen onstage, but only commented on after the fact. In addition, many of the characters sing their versions of the action as reminiscences, as for example in the Captain's opening aria, "It was just after 1:15," which recounts the original appearance of the hijackers on board. Meanwhile, each scene ends with a number in which the chorus reflects on the events that have occurred. The opera begins with a prelude consisting of two of these choruses, one sung by a Chorus of Exiled Palestinians and the other by a Chorus of Exiled Jews.
Act I begins with the Captain of the Achille Lauro narrating the events of the original hijacking; most of the passengers had disembarked for a tour of the Pyramids when the hijackers first appeared; the remaining ones were rounded up in the ship's restaraunt. Another version of the hijacking story is told by a Swiss Grandmother, one of the passengers, and then by the ship's First Officer, who also tells that a passenger had been shot in the leg, apparently accidentally when a bullet ricocheted off the floor. Molqui, one of the terrorists, sings an aria ("Give these orders") explaining the situation to the passengers and promising them safety. Scene 2 introduces another of the terrorists, Mamoud, a more dangerous and violent man than his companion. The Captain reflects on the fact that every ship is a kind of prison. ("I have often reflected") Another passenger relates how she locked herself in her cabin and stayed there through the entire episode, undiscovered. Mahmoud sings an aria about freedom, contrasting with the Captain's earlier song. ("Those birds flying")
The chorus that opens Act II, "When Hagar was led into the wilderness," recounts the Biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael, representing the beginnings of Arab-Israeli tension. Molqui is frustrated at the lack of a reply to his demands; he is afraid people will die. Mamoud says only, "Now we will kill you all." It is only now we see Leon Klinghoffer for the first time. Explaining that he is normally a person who likes to avoid trouble, he nevertheless goes on to condemn the hijackers, accusing them of simply using their ideologies as a license to fulfill their real desire--to kill. ("I've never been/A violent man") He is replied to in equally harsh terms by another hijacker, called "Rambo." ("You are always complaining") Another passenger tells her story, including her impressions of Klinghoffer. Finally we hear from the last of the terrorists, Omar, a young idealogue who is hoping to die in his cause. At the end of the scene, Omar and Molqi fight, and Molqui takes Klinghoffer away.
The next scene opens with Klinghoffer's wife Marilyn, talking about disability, illness, and death; she assumes that her husband has been taken to the ship's hospital. In fact, during her aria, he is killed, offstage, by the terrorists, who are now threatening to kill another passenger every fifteen minutes; the Captain tells them to kill him instead of a passenger. As the terrorists negotiate with shore, Leon Klinghoffer's body appears and sings a "Gymniopédie". In the final scene, after the crisis has been resolved and the passengers have disembarked, the Captain tells Marilyn Klinghoffer about her husband's death. ("Mrs. Klinghoffer, please sit down"/"You embraced them!")
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Performance History
World premiere production:
Théâtre de la Monnaie
World premiere: 19 Mar. 1991
Brussels, Belgium
Opéra de Lyon
French premiere: 13 April 1991
World premiere production
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The Captain: James Maddalena
The First Officer; "Rambo": Thomas Hammons
Swiss Grandmother; Austrian Woman; British Dancing Girl: Janice Felty
Molqi: Thomas Young
Mamoud: Eugene Perry
Leon Klinghoffer: Sanford Sylvan
Omar: Stephanie Friedman
Marilyn Klinghoffer: Sheila Nader
Conducted by Kent Nagano
Stage direction by Peter Sellars
Choreography by Mark Morris
Set design by George Tsypin
Costume design by Dunya Ramicova
Lighting design by James F. Ingalls
Sound Design by Jonathan Deans
Projection design by John Boesche
Opéra de Lyon
French premiere: 13 April 1991
World premiere production
Brooklyn Academy of Music
U.S. premiere: 5 Sep. 1991
World premiere production

From BBC
by Andrew McGregor
20 November 2002
El Niño has existed for less than a year, yet it feels like longer already. And while I know it's pretty pointless trying to predict which new works will still be getting public performances in twenty years time, I feel like sticking my neck out on this one. John Adams's nativity oratorio is a winner, a very palpable hit - an intelligent, emotional and sometimes magical re-telling of the old, old story from a new perspective. Adams wants us to experience the birth of the child from the mother's point of view, and realising that the traditional biblical texts couldn't possibly do this on their own, he's drawn on a wide variety of sources to engage our emotions: Hildegard of Bingen, poems by Hispanic women, even the Apocrypha and the Wakefield Mystery Plays.
Adams asks us to think about the miracle of birth afresh, and to help us he's devised one of his most rewarding scores. Those familiar Adams-isms are all there: the chugging chords, the motor-rhythms, the stammering vocal lines familiar from his operas...but there are references to Bach oratorio and Handel as well, and some of the most beautiful episodes I've heard in any of his music.
The recording was made during the original production run at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris, and you can tell the cast has the music in their bones. Dawn Upshaw brings a beautiful simplicity to Mary, Willard White is magnificent as the angry, baffled and then humbled Joseph, and the chorus of three counter-tenors is really effective. The performance gets the atmospheric recording it deserves, and shorn of the dizzying multimedia kaleidoscope that was the original Peter Sellar's production, El Niño emerges with a new radiance and beauty on record.
At a time when other major companies are putting yet more Messiah recordings on the Christmas market, Nonesuch should be thanked for offering such an eloquent alternative. For some people this will be the perfect Christmas present, a gift with real meaning.