In Seven Days - Premium Daily Planner & Productivity Journal for Goal Setting, Time Management, and Personal Growth | Perfect for Students, Professionals, and Entrepreneurs

I purchased this album of CD and DVD immediately after attending a performance of In Seven Days with Thomas Adès himself conducting the San Francisco Symphony against the synchronized light show of Tal Rosner. I needed to examine the music more closely, without and later, via the DVD, the visuals. The music is based on Creation in the Bible's Genesis, with a change in order, and is thus a program of seven parts within one continuous movement. In essence, it is a piano concerto in addition to a tone poem. The piece begins in the treble registers as a fluttering, a random-like agitation, that intensifies with fierce piano work that soon descends to a bass resolution of the opposites, light and dark. Next, is a nosy construction and cleavage as water and sky emerge. The rise of plant life begins slowly, and nobly, with increasing volume and rising piano scales; punctiform notes parallel the increasing complexity of life. The piano and orchestra offer a celestial sprinkling and shimmering of light with the formation of astronomical bodies. What follows is an exciting fugue of energy and brass joy as first chirping animals take to sky and inhabit the sea; and then lively chimes and piano notes scamper about the landscape. The last section is an epilogue of wonder with chordal drones and a walking piano treble; the strings take over, and the piece ends with a tinkling and a slight a flourish. With Nicolas Hodges as the piano and Adè as the podium of the London Sinfonietta, the swirling, chattering composition provides a journey.Revisiting the light show with the music on a large TV screen, I find that the abstract visuals (whose elements on the six split sections are said to have been derived from the architecture and interiors of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall) add little to enjoyment of the score. [A familiar lesson: the light shows of the 1960s behind psychedelic rock bands were short-lived.] The colors, forms, and movements are not obviously correlated with actual cosmic and worldly matter, except perhaps through underlying mathematics. However, the black and white ocean waves at the start are akin to quantum fluctuations; the green latticework and silvery crystal work could suggest the rise of plant life, the shifting and increasing white dots against black certainly have a feeling of astronomy along with the kaleidoscopic features of emanating solar and reflective lunar light; the explosion of shapes, beginning with yellow multiplying, twittering protozic blobs, matches that of animal life; and the Contemplation final section is definitely more architectural until the last moments when the visual oceanic waves return, indicating a cyclic cosmos.The second and third compositions on the album are by Conlon Nancarrow. The player piano studies (no. 6 and 7) are arranged for concert pianos by Adès, who along with Rolf Hind are the performers. Visuals accompanying these works are by Tal Rosner and Sophie Clements. The first study is light and Latin in spirit. The syncopation and flow are suggestive of a tango. The visuals here are Mark Rothko-like in their rising and lowering blocks of color; superimposed are passing roadside images. The second study is exuberant pointillism of piano. Even the visuals are pointed (triangles in moving arrays), or flowing slits, bars, squares, and circles akin to player piano rolls. The DVD has as bonus a conversation between Adès and Rosner discussing In Seven Days; in the background, through the window, can be seen a side of the Royal Festival Hall, which is now recognizable from the earlier visuals. In conclusion, the entire album is worthwhile. While the CD alone is ample, the DVD may offer a new perspective that can emphasize the music, though it itself is an art form that can be regarded on its own merits. And because this item may be marketed under DVDs, I admire the technical aspects, overall conception, and visual metaphoric impressions. But it left me cold. I meshed with the intellectual features; it was not as emotive as the musical patterns.