America's Calder Quartet offer three chamber works by Thomas Adès – the Piano Quintet (2001) with the composer on piano, and two string quartets, Arcadiana (1993) and The Four Quarters (2011), the latter being recorded for the first time.
The music churns up any number of pairs of oppositional characteristics – light and substantial, familiar and unfamiliar, original and borrowed, anchored and floating, complex and clear, natural and artificial, connected and independent, concrete and evanescent.
It’s music that grips from the start, and always holds on through the strength of its sense of becoming. And in these performances, it’s not afraid to leave listeners with the ache of intense sensual beauty.
