Concert #1 - Chamber Music. Thomas Adès, Quatuor Diotima, Mark Simpson,

Joined by clarinettist Mark Simpson and the prestigious Quatuor Diotima, all artists with great experience in musical creation, Mr Adès has crafted a programme around Alchymia (2016), the Paris premiere of his string quartet with clarinet, and excerpts from his latest opera The Exterminating Angel, which was enthusiastically received at the Opéra Bastille in the spring of 2024.

Along with the Hommage à Robert Schumann (1990) by Hungarian György Kurtág – with whom he studied in Budapest for several years –, a number of works by American composers reveal subtle aspects of his own musical inspiration. The melodic poetry of Largo (1901) by Charles Ives, an ineffable composer living in the realms between tonality and chromatism, shares acoustic space with the Three Studies for Ursula by the atypical Conlon Nancarrow, who appreciates the subtle, rhythmic groove shifts that so inspired György Ligeti in the 1980s. Lastly, Aaron Copland’s Sextet (1937) brings together all the artists in its intense, pulsing, offbeat music with the expressive force of sounds from across the Atlantic.

Programme:

• Charles Ives, Largo for Violon, Clarinet and Piano
• Conlon Nancarrow, Three Studies for Ursula, For solo piano
• György Kurtág, Hommage à Robert Schumann, for viola, clarinet and piano
• Thomas Adès, Berceuses from The Exterminating Angel, Nos.1,3,4 for clarinet, viola and piano (French premiere)
• Thomas Adès, Alchymia, for clarinet and string quartet, (Paris première)
• Aaron Copland, Sextet