Born in Prague in 1979, the composer, conductor and chorus master Ondrej Adámek, who studied in his Czech hometown and in Paris, has already won numerous prestigious awards for his orchestral, chamber, vocal and electro-acoustic music. In his musical language, which also repeatedly incorporates elements of distant cultures, he creates unusual musical narratives. He seeks the authenticity of his interpretations by combining voices and movements, gestures and theatricality, phonetic and semantic aspects, and his own specially developed musical instruments. The premieres of Ondrej Adámek's "Where are You?" and "Follow me" were distinctive for their excellent casts, featuring stars such as Magdalena Kožená, Isabelle Faust and Simon Rattle. In Adámek’s "Follow me", a three-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, the melodies are divided between the soloist and the orchestra along the lines of the late medieval hocket technique, whereby the composer seeks to connect a single individual with a (human) crowd. The first performance of Adámek’s "Where are You?" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra was an outstanding event in Munich's concert programme this year. In the eleven-part, approximately 35-minute-long kaleidoscope of sound, dominated by constant motoric movement – ranging from everyday sounds such as the monotonous ticking of a clock to the sweeping, electrifyingly rhythmic pounding of the orchestra tutti – the composer embarks on a search for the human ("Where do we come from and where are we going?") and the divine.

Review

This is music that grabs the listener by the ears and doesn’t let go. I found it completely exhilarating.

Nothing about either score included on this recording is remotely derivative or even predictable. If I were to say that it is as if Adámek had smashed up all previous music into tiny pieces and then reconstructed them into something marvellous and new, that might give the impression that he is some kind of arch post modernist. He is nothing of the sort. Almost miraculously he manages to be both uncompromisingly modernist and yet intensely communicative. Try his setting of what, in effect amounts to St Theresa’s ecstatic, religious orgasm in the seventh song of Where Are You? and what you’ll get is music that verges on the demented but which manages to be deeply spiritual and very sexy! Both scores are full of such wild, rude, exultant moments.

Follow Me is simultaneously a violin concerto and someone having a lot of fun with what a violin concerto might mean. I am not aware of another concerto that concludes with what amounts to a musical lynching of the soloist by the orchestra. One of the characteristics of Adámek’s writing is his absolute command of even the most outré material. Every note delivers an aural punch. He is of course capable of writing music of great delicacy, as in the concerto’s Bach derived slow movement but even here every note makes its point.

The opening movement features orchestral soloists echoing the opening phrases by the solo violin (the ‘follow me’ of the work’s title), phrases the composer explains in his joyous, quixotic note that were inspired by the exaggerated vibrato of a singer in Japanese Noh theatre. The orchestra, in a sense, gathers round the soloist, repeating her phrases. Isabelle Faust is at her imperious best here. This then subsides into silence before the soloist starts again with more seductive phrases. As Adámek puts it, these phrases provoke the orchestra “eventually driving them mad”. This builds and builds as the various motifs combine and recombine. The tension generated by the gradually gathering of tempo and volume is quite ferocious before Adámek pulls the rug from under the expected eruption and the movement ends with weird whistlings and scrapings out of which the slow movement evolves. A great strength of Adámek’s music is to unsettle the listener whilst keeping them on the edge of their seat.

One of the unifying techniques across all three movements of this concerto is what Adámek likens to a kind of musical ping pong where melodies are split, in alternate notes, between soloist and members of the orchestra. This effect plus an extreme elongation of material taken from Bach is most noticeable in this slow movement. It is a strange and mysterious movement that subsides into the uneasy calm from it emerged.

On a purely technical level, the finale combines all the elements of the previous two movements but that scarcely does justice to the effect it has on the listener. The shadowing of the soloist which gives the work its title is allowed finally to work its way from a hushed, fugitive opening all the way to the mighty climax that the opening movement was robbed of. As in that movement, the following of the soloist by the orchestra becomes more combative- a wry nod I think to the lion taming tradition of the 19^th century virtuoso concerto – and the music, dominated by a rogue trombone, constantly threatens to swamp the soloist whose final phrases are delivered off stage before a final thrilling orchestral stampede rounds things off. Is that a tongue in cheek reference to the final sacrificial dance of the Rite of Spring I hear in this final passage? What this description may not capture is that this is all immensely diverting and colossal fun. The world of Adámek’s music may be capable of great seriousness but it never takes itself too seriously.

Follow Me is, in many ways, the curtain raiser for the even more remarkable Where Are You? My earlier comments have probably already given some indication of what it is like. Written for mezzo soprano and orchestra, it is a song cycle on spiritual themes with texts from the Bible, the Gita and the autobiography of St Theresa. None of this is handled in a conventional manner. The opening section revels in the vowel sounds of the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. A later movement sets possible Czech translations of those Aramaic words. It’s that sort of piece! The theme that unites these disparate elements is the way in which the spiritual quest for the divine however how high it can raise us comes down to earth with the question ‘Where are you?’ left unanswered. It has to be said that the piece celebrates the quest as much as it illustrates its ultimate failure and it does so with affection and good humour as well as profundity and anguish.

The vocalist is required to adopt a huge range of singing styles from breaths and rolled r’s to folk singing to outrageous coloratura. As in most of his other scores that I’ve heard, Adámek can find music in almost anything and make no mistake – this is a musical event above all else. The composer isn’t advancing some obscure musicological idea but making maddening, frenzied, bewildering, exuberant music. Ultimately, like the spiritual quest it describes, words fail to do justice to this piece. You are just going to have to listen to it.

--MusicWeb International (David McDade)

In the Autumn of 2021, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with its new chief conductor, Nicholas Collon, arranged a Thomas Adès festival in Helsinki devoted to the world famous composer’s music in addition to works by other composers chosen and conducted by Thomas Adès (b. 1971). One of the highlights of the festival’s program was the world première of Märchentänze in its version for violin and orchestra performed by violinist Pekka Kuusisto, Adès’ long-time artistic partner. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra includes four recent and exciting orchestral works written by the composer between 2016 and 2021 in world première recordings.

In addition to the Märchentänze, this album includes Adès’ orchestral Hotel Suite from Powder Her Face, an adaptation based on the music from the opera through which Adès first made a widespread name for himself in the mid-1990s. The orchestral version of Lieux retrouvés, originally written for Steven Isserlis, could be described as a cello concerto in the spirit of Marcel Proust. Orchestral work Dawn was written for the 2020 London Proms for ‘orchestra at any distance’, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Adès’ Dawn comes across as timeless music floating in a serene universe of beauty all its own.

REVIEW:

These performances by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (FRSO) under their current Chief Conductor, British-born-and-trained Nicholas Collon (b. 1983) are magnificent and bring out all the subtle colorations in these superbly scored works. That said, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto gets a big hand for his superb playing in Märchentänze [T-10 thru 13]. And the same goes for Finnish cellist Tomas Nuñez in Lieux retrouvés [T-6 thru 9].

The recordings were made in October 2021 (Hotel… & Lieux…) and April-May 2022 (Märchentänze & Dawn) in the Helsinki Music Center’s Concert Hall. They present consistently generous, dynamically wide-ranging sonic images with both soloists centered, well captured and effectively highlighted. As for the orchestral timbre, it’s characterized by titillating highs, a pleasant midrange and clean bass. While these recordings are good on headphones, this colorfully scored music is even better over a good home theater system.

-- Classical Lost and Found (Bob McQuiston)

“I am really excited about our upcoming release of Aerial on Sono Luminus this year! The album was originally released in 2014 on Deutsche Grammophon and now the journey of the album continues with Sono Luminus in a remastered version by their very own Daniel Shores. The orchestra piece Aeriality is at the center of the album which also features Into Second Self, Ró, Tactility, Trajectories and Shades of Silence. It was quite a personal journey to record these pieces in Iceland, working with long time collaborators such as the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Caput Ensemble and Nordic Affect. It is such a joy to continue the collaboration with Sono Luminus that we have grown for many years now with releases of, now, all my portrait albums to date! The new release of Aerial will also feature percussion quartet Aura performed by the LA Percussion Quartet.” (Anna Þorvaldsdóttir)

REVIEW:

The Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has emerged as one of the most talented Nordic composers in recent years. Her voice is quite different from that of other contemporary composers, and thankfully her orchestral music has become widely performed and recorded by the leading orchestras world-wide and acclaimed by reviewers and the musical public alike.

The opening work on this disc - Into-Second Self - is for seven brass instruments and percussion. It opens with rumbling, whistling effects as if we are in a dark threatening tunnel, creating an atmospheric roar of sound with the percussion generating what is like an ancient Celtic chant on the horns and trombones. This is heard in an unearthly harmony by evoking sounds of aircraft and loud thuds on the drums, a shimmering of bells becoming increasingly loud then settles into silence.

Written for flute, bass clarinet, piano, percussion, two violins, viola and cello, Rö, opens with a jangle on percussion and piano chords aided by the bass clarinet and the strings harmony. We hear sudden noises against the wind of the flute and bass clarinet with a hint of an idea on the wind against the loud disharmony on the percussion - all broken by a bagpipe-like noise and a twanging idea, all of which creates a world of mystery, yet is brought to a terrible halt with thuds on the keyboard before a slow descent into quiet.

Under the baton of Ilan Volkov, Aeriality opens with a loud chord from the orchestra offering exciting harmony, and the entry of the piano is heard against strings and woodwind babbling in a dynamic pulse - as if we are hearing the movement of great bodies in space, or on the earth - is this the cosmos? There is a constant flow of sound and dissonance with occasional noises and murmuring on the strings, growing steadily louder with roars from the brass and a shrill woodwind theme emerge together in a great potent idea leading to a low-pitched drone of noise against a twitter of woodwind invoking birds calling out in the wind, yet the sudden crashes on the percussion are like chains breaking against rocks then disappear into silence.

Tactility opens with a mysterious hovering sound on harp and percussion and a dull throbbing sound, yet the harp hints at Japanese music, interrupted by thuds on the drums, and a rustling sound pattering away in the background, then we hear the effect of the wind blowing against the window ending with an inflection on the harp.

Composed for piano and electronics, Trajectories opens with a stirring rise in noise and an enormous build in tension with chimes of momentous chords on the piano, lending the impression of ‘something trying to escape’, all in dreadful harmonies, dissonance and a ripple of piano chords repeated amid the chime of a clock, rippling and tapping on the keyboard and an all-powerful throbbing noise before suddenly dying away.

The composer uses an ensemble of baroque instruments for her Shades of Silence, which opens with high shrill notes on strings, creating an amazing acoustic effect enhanced by the pizzicato strings in rising and falling dissonance, of sharply brutal music on the harpsichord that strangely creates an almost magical effect.

Aura, the final piece here, written for four percussionists, starts with an eerie atmosphere of a strange whispering ringing on the percussion with a chiming xylophone and ringing tubular bells, creating an amazingly catatonic effect, against a rustling, loud throbbing noise ‘like whales in the sea.’ For anyone unaware of this young Icelandic composer, this disc will prove an enlightening experience, and can only whet one’s appetite for her more recent compositions. Thorvaldsdottir herself was responsible for the engineering on four of the seven recordings, adding another credit to her talents; the sound quality is splendidly ambient throughout.

-- MusicWeb International (Gregor Tassie)

ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) releases a recording documenting its close and longstanding relationship with Brazilian born composer Marcos Balter on its own in-house recording label, TUNDRA. Balter and ICE first began collaborating when Balter was on faculty and ICE was in residence at Chicago's Columbia College, and the fruitful relationship has continued to the present day, chronicling Balter's unique trajectory as a voracious and eclectic artist.

The Elizabethan manuscript from which this album is entirely drawn is known by its British Library shelf-mark: Additional Manuscript 31390. Add. MS 31390 contains 135 pieces, which capture a snapshot of musical life in the 1570s. Some of the pieces reflect the “hottest new releases” of 1578 (when the manuscript was copied) while others are “golden oldies” from the first half of the 16th century. During the reign of Elizabeth I, there was no way to record music other than by putting musical notation onto paper. In creating an audio recording of this notational record, we aim, as the portrait painter does, to capture not merely the likeness, but the liveness of our subject: musical manuscript as mix-tape or playlist that gathers together music for later hearing and for posterity. Some of the pieces on this album are standards. Those who have sung in a choir will surely know and love Tallis’s O sacrum convivium. Aficionados of viol consort music will be familiar with a number of the In nomines. We hope putting these gems of the repertory in proximity to unknown and previously unrecorded works recontextualizes them to offer a more complete view of this important and beautiful manuscript.