On 14 August Thomas Adès and Sascha Bota premiered the composer’s Flower Variations for viola and piano at the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival; the 9-minute piece takes its theme from ‘Les champs’, the third movement of Adès’ cello work Lieux retrouvés. Further performances with Bota are planned for Wigmore Hall (where Adès is artist-in-residence) and Paris. It was commissioned by the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival with the generous support of Mark Symes and J G Howes.
Describing the genesis of the piece, Adès writes:
I first encountered Sascha and his playing when we performed the solo piano and viola parts together in Janáček’s Concertino at the Barbican in 2021. I was thrilled by his playing, inspired by his artistry and freedom; and at that moment the seed of the Flower Variations was sown. Sascha plays the viola as naturally as a bird sings, with a love and profound understanding of music, sustained by the highest refinement and great brilliance.
Flower Variations was part of a focus on Adès at the Festival that included performances of both of his string quartets Arcadiana and The Four Quarters, piano work Traced Overhead , and the chamber-scale reimaginings of his music for the stage Four Berceuses from ‘The Exterminating Angel’ and Court Studies from ‘The Tempest’.
On 23 September the Danish String Quartet and Johannes Rostamo give the UK premiere of Wreath – for Franz Schubert at Wigmore Hall. Premiered in 2024, it was commissioned as part of the Danish String Quartet’s ‘Doppelgänger’ series, in which composers are invited to create a companion work to music by Schubert – in this case the C-major String Quintet (1828).
Adès writes of the single movement work:
The central string trio of violin, viola and cello play arco throughout, a gradually unfolding "lifespan" of entwined "blooms". The outer violin and cello outline them in pizzicato…the players are loosely coordinated, but within specific boundaries, so that within certain limits no two performances would be the same, and the duration is flexible: between fifteen and thirty minutes, depending on the players, or maybe the weather.