Who’s the most successful Generation X composer? I vote for Thomas Adès. The 52-year-old Englishman’s operas, orchestral and chamber works please audiences as well as picky music critics.
Thank the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest for bringing him to San Diego for four concerts.
The second installment of his residency happened Saturday evening in the Baker-Baum Concert Hall, where his “Alchymia” for string quartet and basset clarinet received its U.S. premiere.
The title refers to alchemy’s goal of transmuting base metals into gold. “Alchymia’s” four movements deal with transformations. “A Sea Change” references Ariel’s song from “The Tempest.” “The Woods So Wild” was a Tudor popular song adapted by William Byrd for keyboard variations.
“Lachrymae” transforms John Dowland’s viol consort arrangement of his song “Flow my tears.” “Divisions on a Lute-song” quotes a Frank Wedekind tune that Alban Berg turned into a screechy organ-grinder ditty heard at the start of the final scene of “Lulu.”
Here’s the thing, though. With the exception of “Lute-song,” whose melody Adès sets fairly straightforwardly (although wrong notes in the harmony undermine it), the other quotations are so transformed as to be unrecognizable. Adès the alchemist transmuted these quotes and subjected them to further transformations.
In “A Sea Change,” a four-note descending pattern in the basset clarinet that is sort of in A major or A minor is echoed and tracked by the strings. It becomes stretched out or compressed, with the basset clarinet and violin lines becoming more ornate as the melody drops more and more, ending with a hint of the four-note falling figures in calmer rhythms.
“The Woods So Wild” features constantly scurrying eighth notes in the strings, with the clarinet quietly entwined in vaguely tonal harmonies and dizzy textures.
“Lachrymae” has a slow quarter-note pulse with a melodic motive of an octave leap up and a step downward, imitated by the upper strings. The clarinet harks back to the descending four-note motive of the first movement and different speeds entangle the lines, with a return to the slow quarter note motive texture.
The last movement feels like theme and variations, with that same major-minor feeling of tonality of the first movement, but with the gestures considerably more distorted. Strings swoop up and down, with the basset clarinet queasily bending tones. It ends up in a gentle Mahleresque adagio combining the four-note falling motive of the first movement with the octave up and step down motions of the third, with a breathtaking fade-out on a partially resolved major triad.
“Alchymia” is a significant addition to the canon of clarinet and string quartet music, although its use of the rare basset clarinet could limit performance opportunities. Clarinetist Mark Simpson, whose tonal control of his instrument was extraordinary, certainly has a wonderful new work to champion. Violinists Alexi Kenney and Anthony Marwood, violist Rebecca Albers, and cellist Coleman Itzkoff made the technical demands of this work appear effortless.
The audience seemed enchanted by Adès’s alchemy, applauding with delight after each movement.
Preceding Adès on the first half was viol consort music by Byrd, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, and Henry Purcell played without vibrato by Marwood, Kenny, and Itzkoff, with Maiya Papach and Itsuki Yamamoto on violas, and the addition of Anri Tsukji on cello. Their precise intonation was impressive, but I missed those up-bowed crescendos that early music experts supply to make the music more expressive.
By contrast, Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet was comfortably dispatched with joy by violinist Tessa Lark, violist Maiya Papach, cellist Efe Baltacigil, bassist Timothy Cobb, and Adès on piano.
Hertzog is a freelance writer.