Thomas Adès
Thursday, September 5, 2024
Royal Albert Hall, London
Thomas Adès’s eighteen-minute Aquifer – a “subsurface layer or layers of rock or other geological strata of sufficient porosity and permeability to allow either a significant flow of groundwater or the abstraction of significant quantities of groundwater” – is a very engaging listen, complex but clear in both its direction and orchestral layers, richly expressive, intense in its peripheral explorations, vivid in its marching and lyrical digressions, tributaries coming together for a sonorous unambiguous conclusion (the scoring at this point includes a “big” rattle, harpist-executed; see vid below). Aquifer is a rewarding piece, one to return to, played brilliantly; following which Sir Simon presented Adès with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal.
From water in various guises to forests and mountains – Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony performed in Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs’s 2021 edition of the 1878-81 version that incorporates a cut in the Finale made by the composer for a specific performance. At the outset, leaves rustled in the tremolo strings and there was an easeful horn solo. On another night the first-movement tempo might have seemed a little ruthless but it convinced on this occasion, nothing stodgy, and the slow movement, of the night, played warmly, was almost jaunty in places. The heraldic Scherzo was athletic, the Trio songful; and the Finale, while overly volatile, found some unexpected Mahlerian correspondences, and the coda was suitably awe-struck. If I am honest, I didn’t notice the afore-mentioned cut (maybe it’s always been there); whatever my Brucknerian credentials are, they are now in tatters.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022ctv
I think you are right, the cut is in some previous publications and was not opened up by Cohrs. Not sure though, especially as Rattle reckons there are 14 versions of this symphony! It’s too early in the morning to wrestle with that statistic!