Calder Quartet & Thomas Adès - The Twenty-Fifth Hour: Chamber Music of Thomas Ades (2015)

Three classic works by Thomas Adès, performed by the composer with the Calder Quartet Piano Quintet, The Four Quartets and Arcadiana. These three works are not only in classic genres but themselves becoming classics, with Arcadiana as close as any modern quartet to joining the repertory. Adès wrote 'Arcadiana' in 1994 and gave it a favourite form, of several sound pictures, distinct and characterful, being drawn out of the same musical stuff, as if each were a different view through a kaleidoscope. 'Six of the seven titles', he has noted, 'evoke various vanished or vanishing 'idylls'. The odd-numbered are all aquatic, and would splice if played consecutively.' His 'Piano Quintet' of 2000 is in some ways quite different, not sectional and scenic but a continuous, abstract span. It is, however, as full of striking imagery as its predecessor, and sometimes of similar imagery: tightly worked cascades in the high treble, interlocked textures coming undone, a moment of repose, but now all engaged in the one unfolding process. 'The Four Quarters' (2010) returns to the Arcadian model of brilliant evocation by means of tight construction, the central metaphor this time being the diurnal cycle.