14 Feb 2019

ADÈS: Violin Concerto, Concentric Paths

From Music Alive, 8:10 pm on 14 February 2019

Anthony Marwood plays the NZ première of the work written for him in 2005.

Anthony Marwood

Anthony Marwood Photo: Sussie Ahlburg

British composer Thomas Adès writes of his concerto, Concentric Paths:

‘This concerto has three movements, like most, but it is really more of a triptych, as the middle one is the largest. It is the “slow” movement, built from two large, and very many small, independent cycles, which overlap and clash, sometimes violently, in their motion towards resolution. The outer movements too are circular in design, the first fast, with sheets of unstable harmony in different orbits, the third playful, at ease, with stable cycles moving in harmony at different rates.’

The cover of the published score adds another circular metaphor to this labyrinthine mix of points and cycles, of lines and orbits: a reproduction of the geometrically overlapping trajectories of a ‘Map of The Earth and Planetary Orbits’ from a Celestial Atlas of 1661.

The three movements have the titles: Rings – Paths – Rounds.

Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Town Hall, 14 February 2019
Producer: Tim Dodd
Sound Engineer: Adrian Hollay

Get the RNZ app

for easy access to all your favourite programmes