Nonesuch
2004
On The Transmigration Of Souls
About This Album
Much has been written about On the Transmigration of Souls, the first major response from the concert music sphere to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and still one of a very few works of art of any kind to have engaged itself on a large scale with that earthshaking event. The general consensus has been that John Adams did an excellent job with a very tough commission. The work was first performed, with Lorin Maazel leading the New York Philharmonic, in New York on September 19, 2002. It has since been given in other cities and has now been recorded in a performance by the forces that gave the premiere, by itself (the work is about 25 minutes long), for release on the Nonesuch label.

Adams has deployed the basic techniques of his musical language in such a way as to throw his hearers into the maelstrom of emotions that many people experienced in the days following September 11 -- an impressive accomplishment, and one that was even more remarkable in 2002. On the Transmigration of Souls is written for a combination of taped sounds and live performers, a common enough thing in the pop world but prefigured in classical music mainly, as critic David Schiff points out in an Atlantic Monthly essay included in the liner notes, by Steve Reich's Different Trains -- another work that deals with a violent event that remains partly beyond the limits of human understanding.
Track List

1.

 
report abuse