John Adams: Doctor Atomic

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Finley ‘owns’ the characterisation of J Robert Oppenheimer…and Julia Bullock’s Kitty [is] the most ardent possible. All else is compelling on every level, with superb British support from Brindley... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2018, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 29th Jun 2018
Catalogue No: 7559793107
Label: Nonesuch
Length: 2 hours 36 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week

29th June 2018
BBC Music Magazine

August 2018

Opera Choice
Gramophone Magazine

August 2018

Editor's Choice
Presto Recordings of the Year

Winner 2018
Grammy Awards

61st Awards (2019)

Nominee - Opera Recording
BBC Music Magazine Awards

2019

Finalist - Opera
Opus Klassik Awards

2019

Winner - Opera (20th/21st century)
Gramophone Awards

2019

Finalist - Opera
Limelight Magazine Recordings of the Year

2018

Winner - Opera

Adams, J: Doctor Atomic

Work length2:36:45

Album only

Julia Bullock (vocals), Marcus Farnsworth (vocals), Samuel Sakker (vocals), Jennifer Johnston (vocals), Brindley Sherratt (vocals), Andrew Staples (vocals), Aubrey Allicock (vocals), Gerald Finley (vocals)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers
John Adams

Doctor Atomic: Overture

Track length5:10

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"The end of June 1945"

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"First of all, let me say"

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"We surround the plutonium core"

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"We are bedeviled by faulty detonators"

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"Many of us are inclined to say"

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"The nation's fate..."

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"This is a petition"

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"What if it's a dud?"

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"The test must go on as scheduled"

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"No, before the bomb is used"

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"Am I in your light?"

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"Long let me inhale, deeply..."

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"The motive of it all was loneliness"

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Electrical storm

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"What the hell is wrong with the weather?"

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"Five hundred U.S. Superfortresses are raining bombs"

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"I'll sign the report, sir"

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"With respect, sir, anyone with two good eyes"

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"I have been preoccupied with many matters"

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"Get them out of here. From now on, I'm making my own weather predictions"

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"General, you are bearing up with remarkable fortitude"

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"Batter my heart"

Track length7:34

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"Easter Eve, 1945"

Track length11:59

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Interlude - Rain over the Sangre de Cristo

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"In the north the cloud-flower blossoms"

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"It's midnight, Jack"

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"I've dreamed the same dream"

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"To the farthest west, the sea and the striped country"

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"A delay in the Potsdam Ultimatum"

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"Fermi is taking wagers"

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"I've spent a great deal of time indulging in controlled fantasies"

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"Edward, the test will be delayed an hour"

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Panic

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"This program has been plagued from the start"

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"To keep the weakness secret"

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"I just finished reading The Magic Mountain"

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"The winter dawned, but the dead did not come back"

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"And love, which contains all human spirit"

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"The only saviors are the ham sandwiches"

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Chorus - "At the sight of this"

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"Lieutenant Bush, keep a weather eye on Oppenheimer"

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"To what benevolent demon do I owe the joy of being thus surrounded"

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"That's their signal!"

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"The sky is clear to the east"

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"In the midnight, in the flame-brilliant midnight"

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"Zero minus two minutes"

Track length1:03

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Countdown

Track length6:05

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Recording of the Week, John Adams's Doctor Atomic, conducted by the composer

29th June 2018

John Adams conducts Gerald Finley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first audio recording of his 2005 opera, Doctor Atomic.

‘His most visionary and ambitious stage work to date … Adams’s conducting, second to none in his own music, had tremendous conviction and unique authority, with every facet of the score’s terrible beauty laid bare … thrilling playing and choral singing … Gerald Finley conveyed Oppenheimer’s moral agony with singing of great refinement and subtlety.’ — Guardian

‘A magnificent accomplishment that easily takes its place alongside the other Adams-Sellars triumphs … It contains music of unearthly splendor … gorgeous lushness and … rich expressivity’ — Los Angeles Times

Nonesuch releases the first studio recording of John Adams’ 2005 opera, Doctor Atomic. Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars created Doctor Atomic’s libretto, drawing from original sources. The composer leads the BBC Singers and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in this recording, which features a cast led by Gerald Finley, who originated the role of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer.

In addition to the San Francisco premiere, Finley has sung Oppenheimer in productions in New York, Amsterdam, Chicago, and London. He is joined on the album by Julia Bullock (Kitty Oppenheimer), Brindley Sherratt (Edward Teller), Samuel Sakker (Captain James Nolan), Andrew Staples (Robert Wilson), Jennifer Johnston (Pasqualita), and Aubrey Allicock (General Leslie Groves). This recording was made possible in part through generous support from New Music USA. Doctor Atomic concerns the final hours leading up to the first atomic bomb explosion at the Alamagordo test site in New Mexico in July 1945. The focal characters are the physicist and Manhattan Project director, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer; his wife Kitty; Edward Teller; and General Leslie Groves, US Army commander of the project. Sellars’ libretto draws on original source material, including personal memoirs, recorded interviews, technical manuals of nuclear physics, declassified government documents, and the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, an American poet and contemporary of Oppenheimer.

John Adams’ works, spanning more than four decades, have entered the repertoire and are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music, among them Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, Chamber Symphony, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and his Violin Concerto. His stage works, all in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, include Nixon in China (1987), The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), El Niño (2000), Doctor Atomic (2005), A Flowering Tree (2006), and the Passion oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012). In November 2017, Adams’s new operaGirls of the Golden West, set during the 1850s California Gold Rush, received its world premiere at San Francisco Opera. The opera’s libretto, assembled by Sellars, includes original Gold Rush song lyrics, letters, journal entries, and personal memoirs from the era. Doctor Atomic is Nonesuch’s thirty-first recording of the works on John Adams, beginning with Harmonielehre in 1986; the label has released forty-seven first recordings of Adams pieces.

Reviews

August 2018

Finley ‘owns’ the characterisation of J Robert Oppenheimer…and Julia Bullock’s Kitty [is] the most ardent possible. All else is compelling on every level, with superb British support from Brindley Sherratt as doubtful fellow physicist Edward Teller…Superbly recorded, the BBC Singers and Symphony Orchestra pull total focus under Adams’s ever more experienced baton, and the last half hour is stunning…Batter my heart indeed.

1st June 2018

This recording combines studio sessions and a live BBC concert performance at the Barbican, making it grippingly vivid with the benefit of extended rehearsal and re-takes. Gerald Finley gives a towering performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer.

August 2018

Finley is imperious once more as Oppenheimer…Bullock also produces an excellent, rounded performance as Kitty…But it is the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers who really stand out here. Razor sharp from beginning to end, the orchestra remain highly responsive to the work’s often complex polyrhythmic patterns and pulsations, with tempo and pacing perfectly judged under the composer’s own direction.

February 2019

All the soloists bravely hold their own in a score burdened by frequently ungrateful vocal writing…Finley’s Oppenheimer, a role that over the years he has made his own, is a performance of fluency, lyrical ability and warm, humane tone…The BBCSO is terrific, and Adams himself conducts with verve and precision.

29th June 2018

The authority that [Finley] brings to the part is immediately apparent...There are many other outstanding contributions, not least from Brindley Sherratt as Oppenheimer's colleague, Edward Teller, and Jennifer Johnston as the Oppenheimers' maid, Pasqualita...Overall, though, this is Finley's opera, and his impressive achievement makes this a highly compelling first recording for this thought-provoking work.

29th July 2018

The performance is so strong that any reservations about the quality of the opera are silenced. Especially vivid are the performances from Gerald Finley (who created “Oppie” in 2005), Julia Bullock as the “love interest” and the BBC Singers and Symphony Orchestra under the composer’s thrusting baton...A must-have for Adams devotees.

6th July 2018

You can complain about Peter Sellars’s libretto, sliced out of documentary sources covering Robert Oppenheimer and his fellow nuclear weapon builders; about heaviness and grandiosity. Yet when Adams (also the conductor) fires on all cylinders, the results are darkly spectacular and sometimes very moving. Gerald Finley’s commitment as Oppenheimer is total, although everyone — orchestra, BBC Singers and all — give their very best.

Limelight Magazine November 2018

This wonderful recording conducted by the composer must be considered definitive in all ways.Finley has made the title role his own since the San Francisco premiere in 2005 and he has a wonderful supporting cast here...Julia Bullock is ravishing as Kitty in her two big scenes...Truly, this is an opera with enormous relevance to our own age of anxiety.

John Adams: Doctor Atomic

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Recording of the Week, John Adams's Doctor Atomic, conducted by the composer

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