Paavo Järvi has chosen wisely: four scores by John Adams that benefit from succinctness, and with the composer present at these recent sessions (March) in the Tonhalle – quite superb playing and sound – the disc opening with Slonimsky’s Earbox, a vibrantly coloured showpiece that embeds Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale into its explosive-arresting start and continues to beguile the ear with a variety of quicksilver patterns and kaleidoscopic use of a large orchestra before a change of scene roughly halfway through conjures something Elysian before a return to rhythmic sleights of hand propel the music to an ecstatic-delirious finish. The half-hour, three-section My Father Knew Charles Ives – he didn’t – (divided into ‘Concord’-‘The Lake’-‘The Mountain’), quiet, ethereal, mysterious (shades of Ives’s Unanswered Question) before marching bands clash with each other to disrupt the placid chiming, Fourth of July-like. Respite and nostalgic contemplation are found lakeside, bells in the mix once more, as they will also be when gazing upwards at an awesome peak, music that soon flies as if to reach something untouchable. Tromba Lontana is discreetly active, melodic interest given to trumpets, and the scintillating Lollapalooza (for Simon Rattle’s fortieth birthday), reminding of Copland’s Danzón cubano, provides the “knockout punch” to a release that shows composer, conductor, orchestra and record company in the best possible light. Alpha 874.