I've been following the music of Thomas Adès since I first encountered it at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1995. His latest work is a Violin Concerto subtitled Concentric Paths, which had its first performance in Berlin on Sept. 4 and its second at the Proms on Sept. 6. BBC 3's "listen again" feature allows you to hear the work until Sept. 13. Blogger Fin Keegan has linked to the relevant portion of the broadcast, so you don't have to sit through Beethoven's Consecration of the House Overture and Stravinsky's Pulcinella. I shan't say too much after only two hearings, but the work seems an imposing addition to the Adès catalogue. It signals a new austerity, if not simplicity, from this formerly devil-may-care composer: phantoms of Shostakovich, particularly the later, haggard Shostakovich, haunt the scene, though none of that composer's characteristic tricks appear. The slow movement is a landscape of awesome breadth.
