John Adams: Naive and Sentimental Music

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Adams
Contents: Naive and Sentimental Music: I. Naive and Sentimental Music (18:10); II. Mother of the Man (15:09) ; III. Chain to the Rhythm (11:00).
Personnel: Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; David Tanenbaum, guitar.
From the notes by Ingram Marshall: "In choosing to call this large work Naive and Sentimental Music, John Adams … is using these words in the sense they were used two centuries ago by the German poet Friedrich von Schiller. … The 'naive' are the unconscious ones, 'for whom art is a natural form of expression, uncompromised by self-analysis or worry over its place in the historical continuum,' as Adams wrote in a note for the first performance. The sentimental artist, being self-aware, tries to find the lost unity of the naive; he is essentially a searcher. …"
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "A recent performance of Adams's monumental California symphony, 'Naive and Sentimental Music,' in the [LA Philharmonic] Orchestra's Casual Fridays series … drew a nearly full house." ("The Anti-Maestro," 4/30/07, pp. 67-68).