Two recent string concertos featured in the Britten Sinfonia’s Prom under Thomas Adès, one of them by the conductor himself. Originally written in 2009 as a piece for cello and piano, Lieux Retrouvés (Places Revisited) was heard in a new version for cello and small orchestra that was receiving its UK premiere with Steven Isserlis, the adept soloist.
As well as being a concerto, the result might equally be construed as a suite of character pieces, its movement titles Waters, The Mountain, The Field and The Town – subtitled Cancan Macabre – suggesting the types of locale evoked along the way, a gentle fluidity marking out the aquatic territory of the first, the cello rising towards a distantly glimpsed peak in the second, and so on. Within the urban ruckus of the fourth, Offenbach’s famous cancan achieved a comic-grotesque and at times ghostly apotheosis.
Isserlis brought subtlety and conviction to the piece, which felt like an introverted counterpart to the evening’s other novelty, Francisco Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures, which was receiving its first London performance. Violinist Augustin Hadelich brought bravura technique and personality to his sometimes soulful, sometimes flamboyant solo line as it filtered through the score’s lucid textures.
Coll is the only pupil Adès has ever accepted: the 31-year-old Spaniard was making his debut as a Proms composer with this witty and attractive piece, whose heritage in the idioms of flamenco and tango was brazenly flaunted.
Adès began with an account of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, which was sufficiently pacy to have the players barely keeping up, though by the time Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony closed the programme, they were clearly more than ready for any speed challenge.
• On BBC iPlayer until 12 September. The Proms continue until 10 September.
