John Adams' 'China Gates' for solo piano. On this performance i'm playing at the exact metronome speed indicated by John. This piece can be performed faster, but i'd rather stick to giving the composer's vision than impressing my own thoughts about how I think the piece should be played on the music. John is specific in his scoring, so it would be ignorant for us as pianists to ignore his markings, or think our own additions will 'improve' the music. Note also that John writes 'Special attention should be given to equalizing the volume of both hands so that no line is ever louder than another'. The polyrhythmic patterns do give rise to some beautiful melodic phrases, but it would be indulgent on behalf of the performer to bring these perceived melodies out, as, once again, this is against the wish of the composer (and completely contradicts the intention of the music). The 'gates' of the title refers to the change of mode - not the actual modes for each section per se, but rather, the exact moment of transition from one mode to the next. The image shown is the graph-form representation John provided as a rough visual guide to the gating sequence. The gating sequence clearly shows extended use of modes at the beginning and towards the end of the piece. The piece is gated poly-palindromically (offset); the bar structure within each mode is a reverse form of the same structure later in the piece. There are 3 main palindromic sections - the main one being the first 8 modes ...
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