BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, John Adams - John Adams: Doctor Atomic (2018) [Official Digital Download]

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.

Tracklist:
1. Doctor Atomic: Overture 05:10
2. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "The end of June 1945" 04:18
3. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "First of all, let me say" 02:15
4. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "We surround the plutonium core" 01:42
5. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "We are bedeviled by faulty detonators" 01:31
6. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "Many of us are inclined to say" 02:26
7. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "The nation's fate…" 02:16
8. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "This is a petition" 02:42
9. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "What if it's a dud?" 02:02
10. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "The test must go on as scheduled" 03:20
11. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 1: "No, before the bomb is used" 04:07
12. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 2: "Am I in your light?" 04:31
13. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 2: "Long let me inhale, deeply…" 06:27
14. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 2: "The motive of it all was loneliness" 04:24
15. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: Electrical storm 02:17
16. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "What the hell is wrong with the weather?" 02:34
17. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "Five hundred U.S. Superfortresses are raining bombs" 04:06
18. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "I'll sign the report, sir" 01:18
19. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "With respect, sir, anyone with two good eyes" 03:00
20. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "I have been preoccupied with many matters" 02:32
21. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "Get them out of here. From now on, I'm making my own weather predictions" 04:05
22. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "General, you are bearing up with remarkable fortitude" 03:18
23. Doctor Atomic, Act I, Scene 3: "Batter my heart" 07:34
24. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 1: "Easter Eve, 1945" 11:59
25. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 1: Interlude - Rain over the Sangre de Cristo 02:57
26. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 1: "In the north the cloud-flower blossoms" 01:54
27. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 2: "It's midnight, Jack" 05:11
28. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 2: "I've dreamed the same dream" 02:48
29. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 2: "To the farthest west, the sea and the striped country" 03:35
30. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 2: "A delay in the Potsdam Ultimatum" 01:00
31. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 2: "Fermi is taking wagers" 02:16
32. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 2: "I've spent a great deal of time indulging in controlled fantasies" 03:36
33. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 2: "Edward, the test will be delayed an hour" 03:01
34. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: Panic 02:52
35. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: "This program has been plagued from the start" 01:30
36. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: "To keep the weakness secret" 02:11
37. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: "I just finished reading The Magic Mountain" 02:15
38. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: "The winter dawned, but the dead did not come back" 01:53
39. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: "And love, which contains all human spirit" 03:00
40. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: "The only saviors are the ham sandwiches" 02:27
41. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 3: Chorus - "At the sight of this" 04:41
42. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 4: "Lieutenant Bush, keep a weather eye on Oppenheimer" 01:32
43. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 4: "To what benevolent demon do I owe the joy of being thus surrounded" 02:42
44. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 4: "That's their signal!" 02:17
45. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 4: "The sky is clear to the east" 02:59
46. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 4: "In the midnight, in the flame-brilliant midnight" 03:06
47. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 4: "Zero minus two minutes" 01:03
48. Doctor Atomic, Act II, Scene 4: Countdown 06:05

Personnel:
Gerald Finley (Robert Oppenheimer), Julia Bullock (Kitty Oppenheimer), Brindley Sherratt (Edward Teller), Samuel Sakker (James Nolan), Nolan), Andrew Staples (Robert Wilson), Jennifer Johnston (Pasqualita)

BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Adams