Thomas Adès – Polaris (UK Première)

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Steven Loy

Interesting review. I just discovered this piece today (after being an infrequent admirer of Adès’s music for many years) and although I agree with your objective observations of the piece, I have totally opposite conclusions. Being an American who has lived in Europe for many years, I can sympathise with Adès’s difficult relationship with tradition and one’s predecessors, as well as with the sense of freedom (for lack of a better word; maybe “detachment” would be more appropriate) he felt (feels) living in the US. To chastise this creative exploration as an “unseemly attempt to please its original US audience” – even more, as “inauthentic” – seems to me a little unfair, to be honest. I do not believe Adès is cynical enough to feel like he must please anyone other than himself, and to question a work’s authenticity when one doesn’t know the composer personally is presumptuous at best. Indeed I think that most of what you consider shortcomings in the piece are actually advantages, although one might have to let go of their more rigorous intellectual preconceptions to appreciate them. It is an interesting quandary, though, don’t you think? One which most composers of our time grapple with daily – and it’s not just a question of taste. For audience members who don’t have a lot of experience with music written by living composers (excluding popular music genres), such a piece is “difficult”; for those who live and breathe this stuff daily and have a broader knowledge of what is being written these days (like you and I) it might be “bland” or “inauthentic”. The question of how to communicate effectively to both kinds of listeners is not so easily answered. (And it’s not just a matter of *appealing* to both groups, composers worth listening to generally don’t feel a need to appeal to anyone, in my experience, but to be true to themselves – whatever that means at any given time). In that context, I think Polaris is a thoughtful, compelling and sometimes simply beautiful solution for how to fill this gap. I don’t care for (or don’t get) the ending, though.

That said, thank you for taking the time to maintain this excellent blog. It is an invaluable resource for keeping up with new pieces being presented and I come back to it often. The access recordings is invaluable and very much appreciated. I look forward to future posts and wish you all the best.

Steven

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