Herald Times, November 8, 2002
(Go to Hoosier Times Website website)

John Adams' 'El Nino' one of the season's best

Music review: 'El Nino'

By Peter Jacobi,
Herald-Times Reviewer

There is nothing minimal about John Adams' El Niño.

Yes, the stylistic quirks of so-called minimalism still crop up: The propulsive repetition of line, the gradual change of short rhythmic and melodic figures, the hypnotic development of an aural foundation that presses forward like a locomotive.

Adams, after all, started out as a disciple of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, progenitors of the movement that made of their music a patterned wallpaper, a mesmerizing thrill for some listeners, a maddening experience for others.

But Adams has moved far beyond those origins to become a composer not only impressive in what he creates but widely, variously expressive. Major orchestral and operatic scores of his make the rounds of major venues around the world. And now comes an Adams oratorio. And it is far from minimal. It is vast.

El Niño, first performed two years ago in Paris, was given its Midwest premiere Wednesday evening at the Musical Arts Center, thanks to about 20 choristers, the IU Symphony, a half dozen soloists and conductor Carmen Tellez. Leave it to Tellez to take on the grand challenge. Her way with the Berlioz Requiem is a remembered for-instance of recent vintage. Here, she's done it again: engineered a remarkable performance feat.

Composer Adams, had he been present, would not, should not, could not have been disappointed by what occurred. Of course, the evening held familiar elements in the forms of three IU-trained countertenors — Dan Bubeck, Brian Cummings and Steven Rickards — who had participated in the Paris presentation and who can be heard on the Nonesuch recording of El Niño available on the market. But the local add-ons manage to match the original, voice for voice, ensemble for ensemble. One suspects that conductor Tellez may have studied the Kent Nagano-led reading, but she was no mere copycat. Wednesday's performance benefited from an infusion of her own ideas about this novel work.

Adams was inspired initially by his love for Handel's Messiah. And part of the musical and structural way, he followed Handel's path, retelling the story of the Nativity, though with music of a contemporary idiom rather than early 18th century Baroque. El Niño offers additional elements, however, those that tend to transfer emphasis at least somewhat from the centrality of Jesus to that of Mary.

The miracle of birth becomes a substantive factor. So does a female perspective. These come verbally from poetry by Hispanic women, the likes of Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Gabriela Mistral. They come from the Gnostic Gospels, the Apocrypha, the old writings of early Christianity left out of the Bible. They come from the Wakefield Mystery Plays. They come also from a composer who chose and pieced and then shaped music around and for these words of love and life and danger and burden and ultimate triumph.

The oratorio contains some bloat, stretching as it does across two hours. There are occasional sections of cuttable languor. But Adams' inventive mind, compositional expertise, and apparent belief in the project keep most of El Niño fascinating, full of surprises and satisfactions. The details — whether in the form of percussive effects or dramatic shifts in choral inquiry — elevate the overall impression after the final notes have faded away. Just as the verbal material covers a wide range of thoughts and religious history, so Adams' music offers an amazing blend of expositions and extensions, designed not only to imprint a given moment on the listener but to leave him or her in a dream cosmos that lingers. The arts will do that when they're conceived by a master's imagination. El Niño obviously has.

One cannot praise Wednesday's performers enough. The musicians in the symphony seemed to have caught the spirit and played with appropriate fervor. The choristers — members of the IU Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and Concert Choir — displayed flexibility and sheen. The Debra Shearer-trained Children's Choir joined in at oratorio's end to exemplify an enveloping innocence and to complete Adam's canvas on an upbeat, this through the telling and the singing of a parable that has El Niño, The Child, the boy Jesus, bending a palm so that his mother can still her hunger with the fruit of the tree.

The three countertenors added beauteous texture to words of pregnant import from the Bible and other sources. Soprano Su-hyoun Kim, to whom was given the role of Mary, and mezzo Hannah Penn, the interpreter of most of the scored Spanish poetry, were superb, not for a moment holding back the vocal resources at their command. Bass-baritone Robert Samels — whether in narrative mode or as a scheming Herod — was a standout, deserving, as were they all, of the cheers and vociferous applause that came at the conclusions.

Supertitles supplied by the San Francisco Symphony, commissioner of the oratorio, provided all the words, whether in English, Spanish or occasional Latin. Michael Schwandt's lighting underscored content, whether in the virginal blue that accompanied El Niño's opening ("I sing of a maiden, a matchless maiden, King of all kings for her son she's taken") or the blood red meant to symbolize the slaying of babies ordered by Herod in a failed effort to rid the land of a king seen as competition. Effective touches, all.

A major event. A definite highlight of the season.