Horizon
John Luther Adams
Australian Chamber Orchestra
ABC Classic ABCLD0137
★
By Michael Morton-Evans
In all the years that I have been reviewing music and CDs in particular, I don’t think I’ve ever come across a more peculiar offering than this. John Luther Adams’ Horizon consists of two movements, each exactly 20 minutes and 23 seconds long, the first entitled Visible Horizon, the second True Horizon. The work was commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra who gave its premiere performance at the Newcastle City Hall in February of this year. I hope that it was its last, because I’m not sure that there are many audiences ready to sit through nearly 41 minutes of what I can only describe as “noise.” Both movements rely on a continuous drone with very few noticeable variations in tempo and only the occasional rise in volume. If you haven’t heard of John Luther Adams before that’s probably because he lived for almost 40 years in the middle of Alaska, and since then has lived in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico, the Atacama Desert of Chile and the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico. He currently lives in the Red Centre of Australia. He is an environmental activist who says that he now believes that music can do more than politics to change the world. I’m afraid in this case he’s failed.