Thomas Adès / Franz Schubert: Piano Quintet / Schubert: Trout Quintet

There is something immediately accessible about the music of Thomas Adès (b. 1971) that sends many critics and music lovers into a frenzy of excitement around his new releases. The frenzy here is justified, as the Piano Quintet is immensely listenable, but with enough material to keep your attention for many subsequent hearings – and hopefully many subsequent recordings. The parts contain fragments of classical tonality, but juxtaposed and layered into a colourful collage that resists resolution and produces the momentum. Even the stillest of moments have a nervous energy that foretells of the excitement ahead. Varying tempi both across and within parts give an elastic quality, often with the instruments setting each other off at new speeds, and making sparks fly between the members of the Arditti Quartet.

Adès, joined by members of the Belcea Quartet, offer a vibrant and fresh-thinking Trout, aided by inventive articulation, which, while perhaps not being textbook urtext, keeps the work alive. The opening movement employs a huge dynamic range, with an immediacy to the sforzandos that propels the music upwards. A daring expanse of string colours is utilised, producing some quite wild effects in places – try the closing bars of the first movement. The character of individual performers is maintained, which adds personality to the performance – though Ms Belcea’s sweet tones occasionally prove too sugary for my taste.

About the composer and performers

Thomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor whose music has attracted sustained critical and popular attention since his twenties, unusual for a contemporary classical composer; alongside composing he maintains an active career as a performer, including on this recording of his own quintet. The Arditti Quartet, founded by Irvine Arditti in 1974, is one of the most recorded and internationally prominent ensembles specialising in new and recent music, having premiered works by composers including Ligeti, Nono and Xenakis. Pairing a genuinely new work with Schubert’s Trout Quintet, one of the most beloved pieces in the entire chamber repertoire, makes the disc a useful way to hear how a living composer approaches the same instrumental combination Schubert used nearly two centuries earlier.

Adès’ piano playing is fluid and effortless, with plentiful but not excessive pedal which seems to mould the piano and string sonorities into one. Top class, and a superb coupling with the Adès.