Ades: Catch/Darknesse Visible/Still Sorrowing/Under Hamelin Hill/Five Eliot Landscapes/Traced OVerhead/Life Story
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Free Music Notes for Ades: Catch/Darknesse Visible/Still Sorrowing/Under Hamelin Hill/Five Eliot Landscapes/Traced OVerhead/Life Story
Free Music Review: Sparkling, original music
Hit: 4 Stars
The first of two CD's to feature Thomas Adès on EMI's Debut label, "Life Story" sparkles with wit and vivid imagination. The first piece on the program, "Catch", is an entertaining, almost frantic chamber piece featuring a mobile clarinet player who taunts, but eventually joins a stationary piano trio. Although the rhythmic texture here is reminiscent of Ligeti, the sonorities are original, with rude clarinet slurps offset against crystalline triads in the cello and violin harmonics. The next two pieces are for solo piano. "Darknesse Visible" presents a recomposition of the John Dowland song "In Darknesse Let Me Dwelle"; stark chimes in the outer registers of the piano enclose pianissimo tremolos, played by Adès himself with a nearly vocal smoothness of expression. "Still Sorrowing" calls for a strip of Blu-Tac to be placed across the central strings of the piano, giving what the liner notes (by Andrew Porter) describe as a "dull, drumming sound above which the treble can sparkle, ripple or ting; below which the bass can murmur or toll." The rest of the pieces include a playful suite for chamber organ, five stirring songs (composed at the age of on 17!) on verse by T.S. Eliot, a brilliant piano sonata, and a "cool, wry, and disturbing" setting of a Tennessee Williams poem. If you are already familiar with the music of Thomas Adès and have somehow missed this out, this CD is worth the asking price for the piano pieces alone. If you are new to this composer, this CD provides a thrilling, absolutely worthwhile overview of his chamber repertoire. I have been making my friends listen to it since the day I bought it. The music is fascinating and immensely enjoyable, the performances precise and expressive. Highly recommended.
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