ADÈS PLAYS IT CLOSE TO THE VEST, TONGUE IN CHEEK  
                                              By D. Rane Danubian
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of March 16-23, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 79
            One of the hot English composers to emerge in recent years, Thomas Adès, is also a pianist, once again touring the West and East Coasts in recital. He is absolutely brilliant in playing the most complex rhythms (with the two hands playing 5 against 7 beats, and the like) and peppering the keyboard with acute percussive effects. This talent is perfect for a lot of modern repertory, like Prokofiev, or Adès’ own Concert Paraphrase on “Powder Her Face,” a comic opera he wrote in 1995.
            His asceticism is effective enough except when approaching Liszt or Wagner, where he simply cannot bring himself to wallow in the sumptuous grandeur of the chordal tapestries.
            Having just turned 39---a nice age he might want to hang on to for several seasons to come---Adès played a return recital March 16 at Herbst Theatre, constructed around  the “Powder Her Face” paraphrase which had been co-commissioned by his presenters at S.F. Performances.
            And that was indeed the concert highlight as the restrained performer lets his music play various roles, somewhere between Puck and Ariel, full of humor and irony, quirky and volatile. He has built this 18-minute paraphrase around broken chords and rapid growling runs---impulsive, improvisatory, and often verging on atonality. In a concluding (less than serious) death scene, he funnels in quotes from every related source: the plainchant “Dies Irae,” the Chopin Funeral March, and Schubert’s lied “Death and the Maiden.” His rhythms shift unpredictably in this wild ride, and it all boils down to an unlikely tango as he rings the curtain down.
            I also relished his go at the rarely heard “Five Sarcasms” Op. 17 by a Prokofiev barely old enough to vote. Here too there were wild, percussive toccatas by a yet more prominent pianist-composer of the past, iconoclastically laced with ironic marches that foreshadowed the famous “Love of Three Oranges” one. Also there was the quirky sequence of vignettes by the fiftyish Janacek, “On the Overgrown Path,” Book II, well before that composer became internationally renowned for his operas, showing some influences of Robert Schumann. The themes scurry about up and down brazenly, like a mouse being chased up and down the stairs by a scandalized household.
            There were a number of encores---Liszt’s “Valse oubliée,” and one of Prokofiev’s “Visions Fugitives"---and some notable misfires in the main program, all too far on the ascetic side---Beethoven’s “Bagatelles,” a Schubert Allegretto, D. 915, and the Wagner-Liszt “Concluding Scene of Isolde’s Liebestod,” which may be the only instance of a father-in-law arranging the music of the younger composer.
             Given the intimadating build of a rugby player and the formal appearance of a math prof, Adès' on-stage manner is deceptively restrained. So much so, that few in the public were keyed to respond to the bountiful humor and satire in his music.
                Thomas Adès, piano, in recital for S.F. Performances, March 16. Herbst Theatre, San Francisco. For info: (415) 392-2545, or go online. 

        ©D. Rane Danubian 2010
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        D. Rane Danubian has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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