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The connection here is British composer Thomas Adès. From the autumn of 2023 he spent two seasons as artist-in-residence with the Hallé in Manchester, represented both as composer and conductor, and the recordings on this disc derive from that time.
The programme presents four of Adès’s recent works together with pieces by two other young British composers he has championed, William Marsey and Oliver Leith. One work was commissioned by the Hallé, two had their premieres in Manchester, and three are getting their first recordings here.
The main event is Adès’s Aquifer, written for Simon Rattle and his Munich orchestra last year. The music is a depiction of water rising through layers of rock, making this one of Adès’s virtuoso orchestral scores, like Tevot or Polaris, not programmatic exactly, but alive with its own atmosphere and original sounds, and very tautly written.
The other Adès works — Shanty — Over the Sea (2020), Dawn — Chacony for Orchestra at any Distance (2020) and Tower — for Frank Gehry (2021) — are less substantial, both in length and conception, though Adès’s inventiveness never deserts him.
Marsey’s Man with Limp Wrist, given its premiere by the Hallé in 2023, offers musical sketches of eight pictures by the artist Salman Toor, drawing skilfully on “centuries-old hymns”, but it does not add up to much. With a seemingly restricted palette of ideas, Leith’s Cartoon Sun (2024) does much more and its constant sense of latent expressive power confirms his reputation as a composer to watch. All the performances, brilliantly detailed, are conducted by Adès.
★★★★☆
‘Adès, Leith, Marsey’ is released by Hallé
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