Shaker Loops was John Adams's first major success, and for all the media coverage of his more recent, often more spectacular and topical scores, it remains his best known and arguably his best work to date. Conceived for seven solo strings, Adams later adapted the piece for string orchestra, and it was in this glossier form that it first reached a wide European audience played by the San Francisco Symphony under Edo de Waart (Philips (CD) 412 214-2PH, 9/86). Recently the London Chamber Orchestra have issued another interpretation on Virgin Classics (reviewed last month). But it's taken a full decade for the recording of the septet version of Shaker Loops to achieve proper distribution. Teamed up on LP with Phrygian Gates for solo piano, it was a rare migrant from the other side of the Atlantic on 1750 Arch Records, sighted only in a few specialist importers' shops. Here it is at last on more general release, partnered now by Light over Water, which once occupied a New Albion LP of its own, equally elusive outside the United States.
The performance of Shaker Loops is a triumph. All seven soloists instinctively understand the homespun, intimate simplicity of the music, from the buzzing activity of the opening ''Shaking and trembling'', through the stillness of the central ''Hymning slews'', the brilliant accellerandos of ''Loops and verses'', to the stylish coda, ''A final shaking''. Without question the chamber scale enhances the appeal of the music; by comparison the orchestral version sounds overblown and regimented, allowing far less scope for touches of individual contribution.
I wish it were possible to be so positive about Light over Water. It has a lovely title, and in lieu of an insert-note (Adams has virtually nothing to say about the piece), photographs evoke wilderness and vast estuarine spaces, which the music broadly echoes in its expansive, slowly-unravelling manner. Heard under conditions equivalent to a blind-tasting, I should have attributed the piece to Terry Riley rather than Adams: layers of scintillating triadic figuration built up on synthesizer activate what are mostly long-held harmonies, creating mood music rather than grist for the intellect. As in so many of Riley's works, the materials in this Adams score all too often outstay their welcome. After the fecundity of Shaker Loops it's hard not to feel disappointed by the routine nature of the ideas and the meagre supply of invention in Light over Water.
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