Adès: Living Toys [CD]

I truly feel strange writing this review, as it is the most negative one I have yet contributed for any composer. I first heard the name of Thomas Ades about four years ago, when a fellow composer told me that he was, and I quote, "the greatest British composer since Britten." Needless to say, my expectations were rather high when I first purchased this recording to try and acquaint myself with his music. I must say that his grasp of the CRAFT of musical composition is astounding for his age (which isn't too far from my own, to give us some perspective). Craft without original ideas, however, is useless. To me, Ades sounds like any number of a long line of British composers living in the long shadow of Harrison Birtwistle. What we get here is the standard line...complex and obtuse, without any real direction. "The Origin of the Harp" is the only work that prevents me from rating this disc even lower, as it has several enchanting moments , but not enough to save this album. His operatic works ARE better than the music presented here, without a doubt, but I am afraid that the hype surrounding Ades's work this early in his career could invariably stunt his compositional growth later in life. Though what I have heard to this point has been disappointing, I still expect great things from Thomas Ades in the future.

Adès has been hailed as everything from "the new Mozart" to "the next Britten", and criticised just as enthusiastically for his perceived arrogance (the New York Times referred to his "spoiled-brat behavior"), but his music speaks for itself. In the chamber pieces featured here, he experiments further with his trademark sonorites, as established in his earlier pieces: shining harmonics on string instruments, pattering rhythmic counterpoint in the percussion, mercurial flourishes in the high-register woodwinds, and irritable growls in the low voices. His experiments with form are just as remarkable -- even as he constantly refers to well-known musical tropes of this century and others, he is constantly analysing and reinterpreting what has come before him. This is mature, self-aware music, from a young master. Beyond the orchestrational and formal aspects, though, is the profound emotionality of Adès' music. If this is your first experience with Adès, be warned: his music is not for everybody, and some of the dissonances can be quite appalling to the unprepared listener, as was suggested by earlier reviewers. That said, it's actually pretty accessible and can be appreciated by people with different levels of musical training. All that is needed is curiosity and an open mind. Wholeheartedly recommended.

I can think of no other composer in the history of recorded music that has enjoyed such a staunch backup from a record label as Thomas Adès with EMI. With the release of EMI's 8th instalment (Tevot, Violin Concerto, Couperin Dances, Tevot Violin Concerto: Couperin Dances), Adès' near complete output, from his opus 1 from 1990 (there is even a pre-opus 1 song cycle from a year before) to his recent Tevot for Orchestra (2007) is available. Missing are only the orchestral suite and Three Studies derived from his opera The Tempest (but the opera is available, Thomas Adès: The Tempest), and his two most recent compositions: "In Seven Days" (2008) and "Lieux Retrouvés" for Cello and Piano (2009). Not even Stravinsky (with Columbia) and Britten (with Decca) ever received such a treatment: they were picked up much later in their respective compositional career (Stravinsky was already in his fifties), and the labels left a few gaps, major ones with Britten (like his opera Gloriana), insignificant ones with Stravinsky. There tends these days to be an hostile attitude from the music-loving public towards the great labels, seen as managed by purely profit-oriented executives with no knowledge in nor interest for the music and the artists (not always untrue), but here, warm praise to EMI.

This CD was the second in the cycle to be released (in 1998), on the same "Debut" collection as the first one (Ades: Catch/Darknesse Visible/Still Sorrowing/Under Hamelin Hill/Five Eliot Landscapes/Traced OVerhead/Life Story). More than its companion disc (much slanted towards piano compositions and thus not giving an entirely rounded view of the composer), it is a good place to start an exploration of Adès. The compositions featured therein are significant, and great. "Living Toys" op. 9 was composed for the London Sinfonietta in 1993. It displays all the hallmarks of Adès: brilliant sonic imagination, drawing on all the inventions and advances of 20th Century music, but never dry, intractable or forbidding, on the contrary always appealingly ear-catching in its wealth of sonic events and its brilliant instrumental invention - and not least in the brilliant references to Bullfight trumpet music (the piece's inspiration is vaguely Spanish, about a Spanish kid's dreams of fights and glory, leaving the men feeling "that their lives were less substantial than the dreams that surrounded him like toys"), turned free-jazzy over snare-drum in the 4th section "Militiamen", or in the hushed, dirge-like glissandos of the 5th section, "H.A.L.'s death", or again in the despaired orchestral shouts that conclude the piece. The same lush and shimmering sonic invention is at play in "The Origin of the Harp" op. 13 (1994), written for the unusual ensemble of three clarinets, three violas, three cellos and percussion.

As with other pieces of Adès, he sounds in his String Quartet, Arcadiana op. 12 (1994) like the true heir of Britten, taking his point of departure where Britten arrived with his second and third String Quartets, with hushed, mysterious and subtle utterances, not eschewing the highly lyrical Romantic gestures either. In its use of very high-registers, the non-Western melodic invention of Korean Isang Yun also comes to mind. At 23, Adès is already a master at referring to old forms without the feeling of quaintness they acquire at the hands of many contemporary composers, and without giving the impression that they are alien material forced into a composition with which they share no stylistic kinship. The 5th movement (track 13) is a quasi-Waltz and Adès succeeds in referring to the Tango (in the 4th movement, track 12, "Et... tango mortale") while distorting the form almost beyond recognition - but just almost, staying brilliantly "on the cusp". The finale, with its enigmatic touches of hushed colors, is close in inspiration to the kind of "minimalistic" music written by composers such as Lachenmann, Sciarrino or Gérard Pesson - but more melodically appealing and fascinating. The subtle, shimmering filigree of Ravel's Poèmes de Mallarmé also came to mind.

The short and brooding a capella chorus Gefriolsae Me, op. 3b (1990), on a Middle English rendering of Psalm 51, is the one out of five that comprise Adès' complete output to date for the medium, the four others being on an EMI portrait published after this one, Thomas Adès: America: A Prophecy. The Britten reminiscence again comes to mind, especially in its harmonies that give the impression of being obvious while still exploring unexpected and inventive avenues.

Sonata di Caccia op. 11 for baroque oboe, horn and harpsichord (1993) is the piece that I find least convincing here. It is meant has an homage both to Couperin and to Debussy, as the instrumental combination is the one planned by Debussy for what was to be his fourth Sonata (after the Celllo-piano, Violin-Piano and Flute-Viola-Harp), which he didn't live long enough to compose, or rather, in Adès' words, an homage of Couperin to Debussy in the manner of his "Apothéose de Lulli" or "Apothéose de Corelli". But what I hear in it is rather "Couperin meets Ligeti", Adès' homage to the baroque trio-Sonata, with clashes that I don't find very convincing between melodic turns typical of the French baroque and spurts and belches from the horn that seem straight out of Ligeti's Horn trio.

Nonetheless, this as good an introduction to the music of Thomas Adès as any - and it is brilliant music.

The other Adès/EMI instalments are Adès - Powder Her Face / Gomez, V. Anderson, N. Morris, Bryson, Almeida Ensemble, Adès, Ades: Asyla, These Premises Are Alarmed, etc. / Rattle, et al (there is a second entry, Ades: Asyla) and Adès: Piano Quintet; Schubert: "Trout Quintet".