Not content with international celebrity as a composer and conductor, Thomas Adès is also a highly accomplished pianist.
At first sight his own habitually complex, sophisticated aesthetic might not seem an obvious match for the folk-based late Romanticism of Janáček. But listen more closely and you hear some of the rhythmic dislocations, the nagging obsessions and sheer quirkiness that also characterise Adès’ music. And in this recital devoted exclusively to the Czech composer’s piano works, his empathy was clear from the instinctual way he inhabited their crepuscular landscapes. The miniatures of Along an Overgrown Path evoke such rustic phenomena as rustling leaves and chattering swallows.
But it’s all infused with mystery and premonitions. Even the call of the barn owl is ominous to Janáček’s ear. Adès’ opulently upholstered tone embodied the sense of humanity immanent in these pieces, though he was always alert too to whispered intimacies and troubled undercurrents. In the Piano Sonata entitled 1.X.1905, Adès skilfully differentiated the restless accompaniments from the arching melodic lines.
The recital included a handful of comparative rarities: a nativity carol, an evocation of a Baroque palace, an early In Memoriam and a late Reminiscence. Adès closed with the more familiar suite In the Mist, whose impressionistic tendencies he enhanced with generous pedalling. Veiled sonorities and blurred outlines coalesced in exquisitely subtle soundscapes.
