The Message Is in the Music
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Thomas Adès is one of the most acclaimed composers of today. An Englishman born in 1971, he has written a variety of pieces, most prominently two operas: “Powder Her Face” and “The Tempest.” Currently, he holds the composer’s chair at Carnegie Hall.
He is also a pianist of distinction, as many of us learned in 2000, when a recital disc of his was released. It contained short, quirky pieces, many of them playful. “Ludic” was the word frequently applied to this disc, and to Mr. Adès. And I will relate an experience I had several years later.
A recording of his piano quintet came out. I undertook to review it. And this Adès work was paired with the most famous piano quintet of all: Schubert’s “Trout.” So impressive did Mr. Adès prove as a pianist, I wrote as much about that as about his composition. This “Trout” recording (EMI Classics) is an all-time winner.
On Monday night, in Zankel Hall, Mr. Adès played a recital, whose program included many of the pieces from that initial 2000 disc. In general, his playing is clear, subtle, and smart. He has a sure sense of the musical line. He achieves fine shadings, or blendings, or blurrings — he can play impressionistically. As you would guess from this, he is a master pedaler. And pedaling is an underrated art.
He also plays like a composer, evincing a knowledge of the structure of a piece — why it’s written the way it is. Mr. Adès reminds me, and others, of another musician born in the same year: Philadelphia’s Michael Hersch, who composes and plays the piano brilliantly.
Mr. Adès began his recital with four small pieces — micro-pieces — by Janacek. These included “Christ the Lord Is Born,” a Christmas carol, which Mr. Adès played with marvelous purity. He then performed Janacek’s suite from 1912, “In the Mists,” which the Czech pianists Rudolf Firkusny and Ivan Moravec introduced to many of us.
The first half of his program ended with music of his own — two works, beginning with the three-part “Traced Overhead.” In its middle part, “Aetheria,” Mr. Adès scampered over the keyboard, showing a true dexterity.
And the second of his works was “Darknesse Visible,” which is based on a song by John Dowland (Dowland being the patron saint of all English composers). Last season in Carnegie Hall, Louis Lortie, the Canadian pianist, played this piece with notable beauty. (He also played “Traced Overhead.”) Did Mr. Adès perform with equal beauty? No, but we can safely say that he played his piece with understanding.
After intermission, it was a suite by Niccolò Castiglioni, a Milanborn composer who lived from 1932 to 1996. This was “How I Spent the Summer,” 10 brief pieces about a sojourn in the Italian Alps. It’s easy to call these a series of postcards. The pieces sound like their titles — “The Wolf’s Lair,” “The Spring at Ganna,” “The Ghost of Presule Castle” — provided you’re told what those titles are. You know how it is with music.
For that last-named piece — “The Ghost of Presule Castle” — Mr. Adès moved from his concert grand to an upright piano, which had been “prepared”: into whose innards objects had been stuck, to create unusual sounds. The piece was ghostly indeed.
Igor Stravinsky was represented in three short and ludic works. The first was “Souvenir d’une marche boche,” written in 1915, a play on the Germans — the Hun. Mr. Adès rendered this piece arrestingly and satirically. Can one play satirically? Mr. Adès showed us how. Then came Stravinsky’s “Valse pour les enfants,” a tiny, delightfully off-kilter piece from 1916. The set concluded with “Piano-Rag-Music” (1918–19), which reflects Stravinsky’s funny understanding of American popular music.
Mr. Adès ended his printed program with Conlon Nancarrow, Texarkana’s own, who lived from 1912 to 1997. These were the “Three Canons for Ursula,” Ursula being Ursula Oppens, the American pianist who has championed much new music from her country. The “Canons” contain some serious math, which Mr. Adès explained before he played them. The math is all well and good — but what are the pieces like to listen to? All form, it seems to me. They strike me as compositional exercises, more than real pieces — pieces to hear.
Bach (to use a grossly unfair example) is loaded with math. But, what with the inspiration, you hardly notice it.
Mr. Adès favored the audience with three encores, beginning with a long-popular one, “Les Barricades mystérieuses” by Rameau. The pianist over-pedaled it. But at least he didn’t pretend he was playing the harpsichord. And it was grand to hear this eternally beautiful piece. Then, Mr. Adès bade goodnight with two more very quick ones by Janacek.
Mr. Adès talked throughout the recital, introducing each piece with microphone in hand. Sometimes he did little more than repeat the title of the piece. And at one point he had the good grace to say he didn’t wish merely to repeat the program notes. I had the feeling that Mr. Adès’s heart wasn’t really in it, all this talking. He seemed eager to play. Maybe someone made him do the blah-blah?
At this Thanksgiving time, I’m grateful for those musicians who think it’s all right to give a concert without talking — who recognize that the message is in the music, and that words can detract, rather than add. These musicians still exist, don’t they?