John Adams & The London Sinfonietta

London Sinfonietta: eclecticism. John Adams: post-minimalism and contemporary musical language. What from certain points of view is a revisiting and a negation of the very concept of contemporaneity (old rules reinterpreted with the dynamism of the "futurable"), for others is a summit meeting of a musicality closely tied to the present, to the contingent. Adams's music is an abstract and therefore profoundly naive vision of the world we live in. Perhaps that's why, right on schedule, the performance of Paul Dresher's "In The Name(less)" happens via CD, while half the audience is still busy finding their seats and the other half hasn't even arrived yet. The choice is cruel, but it helps convey that sense of contingency and haste so typical of our times. The quadrachord and the marimba lumina – two new instruments employed by the composer in this piece – go almost entirely unheard.

The applause, and then the silence, belong entirely to Adams. A few moments pass and the notes of John Cage's "Credo in US" ring out across the hall. Beaten tin cans, a piano and radio fragments, for what was the first plunderphonic experiment in history. Extreme, enjoyable, brilliant. Dresher gets his revenge with the performance of the "Concerto for Violin and Electro-Acoustic Band": a European premiere for what we might call a rock opera inspired by the manipulation of the aforementioned Cage's "Sonata and Interludes for Prepared Piano". An experiment with dramatic yet dynamic tones that surely wouldn't have disappointed the great Los Angeles composer.

We return from the interval for David Lang's ironic "Cheating, Lying, Stealing". "There isn't yet a name for this kind of music", the Los Angeles Times wrote some time ago, referring to Lang and to this piece in particular. There's jazz in it (veiled, but it's there!) and healthy minimalism, but also, and above all, what you don't expect. Lang confirms himself as one of the leading composers on the world stage.

Adams turns from the podium and smiles, satisfied.

Perhaps because now it's the turn of his "Son Of Chamber Music": a first movement built around three notes in an almost funky groove, a second centred on a single melody performed in "layers", laid one on top of the other, cutting, stitching, violating the conceptual canons that underpin modern music. The final movement is a triumph of arrhythmia, halved tempos that recall Adams's own "Nixon in China". He turns once more, smiles, gives his thanks, and leaves.

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