REVIEW: Thomas Adès’ Revised ‘Concerto Conciso’ Premiered at SummerFest

August 21, 2026

British conductor Thomas Adès made a most welcome return to La Jolla SummerFest Wednesday performing the piano solo his Concerto Conciso and accompanying mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano in four Henry Purcell songs. As the La Jolla festival’s composer-in-residence in 2023 and 2024, Adès has endeared himself to local audiences as both performer and composer.

Concerto Conciso, aptly named because it is a single-movement concerto for 11 musicians that lasts a mere 10 minutes, displays the composer’s trademark acerbic, static textures and short, crackling thematic motifs. In this performance conducted by Stephanie Childress, the important solo roles—clarinetist John Bruce Yeh and the composer at the concert grand—were supported by strings and percussion on one side of the stage and the brass quartet on the other, which clarified the antiphonal volleys between the two groups.

Although the SummerFest program lists Concerto Conciso as a world premiere, in his program notes from the stage, Adès explained that the work is actually a revision of his Concerto Conciso written for and premiered in 1997 by England’s Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Listening to the original concerto online, it appears that the revision has allowed Adès to give the solo piano a more prominent role, along with the expanded clarinet solo.

It is always a joy to hear mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano at SummerFest, and her probing accounts of four Purcell songs that opened the program made this reviewer wish we heard her with even greater frequency. In Purcell’s “By Beauteous Softness” Cano nobly communicated the song’s elegant, admiring praise of the British monarch Queen Mary, and the mezzo-soprano infused her spirited account of “Come Unto These Yellow Sands” with admirable Baroque pomp.

In “Full Fathom Five,” Purcell’s setting of a celebrated text from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Cano’s sonorous mezzo and majestic delivery evoked the otherworldly grandeur of both poet and composer in this sumptuous song. Purcell is remembered for his rich legacy of sacred choral music, and his “An Evening Hymn” on a text by Bishop William Fuller imbues that same spiritual ecstasy in the song, interpreted with confident exaltation by Cano, especially her glorious “Hallelujah!” refrains that crowned this jubilant work.

Adès created subtly textured piano accompaniments to these four songs—the composer provided only bass and melodic lines—that developed the character of each song without calling undo attention to his artistry.

Pianist Jeremy Denk last visited The Conrad in January, 2025, playing a brilliant solo recital, so it was rewarding to hear him take on Johannes Brahms’ massive Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, Op. 34. With the bold triadic theme of the opening “Allegro non troppo,” Brahms builds an almost orchestral texture for strings and solo piano, which Denk and his colleagues, led by first violinist Yura Lee, created with great vigor. The second movement, “Andante poco adagio,” gave Denk center stage to indulge the composer’s ravishing major-mode themes with his plush phrasing and a sonic warmth that La Jolla’s Steinway only reluctantly yields. And the string quartet provided Denk with the requisite sonic halo.

In the unrelenting “Scherzo,” Brahms takes the fervor of the opening movement up a notch, and this team provided both the polish and muscle it requires. Cellist Jonathan Swensen’s vibrant opening solo set the bustling “Finale” on its way through one of the more complex rondo structures found in the chamber music repertory. With the other members of the ensemble, violinist Njioma Chinyere Grevious and violist Teng Li, the string quartet and Denk brought this roiling movement and a most rewarding program to a close.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society at The Conrad on August 19, 2026. The festival continues through August 29, 2026, in the same venue.