US TARIFFS UPDATE | August 2025 | No impact expected on your Presto orders | Read full details
Adès: America A Prophecy
Songs & Choral Works
Robin Blaze, Christopher Maltman & Susan Bickley
Polyphony & City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Stephen Layton & Thomas Ades
Awards:
-
Gramophone Awards, 2004, Winner - Contemporary
Adès’s take on a Madness song about a stressed businessman is a hoot. Although Adès apparently did it from memory, it’s fairly accurate, right down to the piano’s cluster chords.
Adès: America A Prophecy
Songs & Choral Works
Robin Blaze, Christopher Maltman & Susan Bickley
Polyphony & City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Stephen Layton & Thomas Ades
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Gramophone Awards, 2004, Winner - Contemporary
Adès’s take on a Madness song about a stressed businessman is a hoot. Although Adès apparently did it from memory, it’s fairly accurate, right down to the piano’s cluster chords.
About
The music of Thomas Adès taps into the spirit of our restless times with unquiet brilliance and an uncompromising vigour evident throughout this survey of works written in the 1990s. From the wild ‘orchestration’ of a Madness song (Cardiac Arrest) to his alarmingly prescient vision of a country laid waste (America), via French Baroque manners (Les Baricades Misterieuses) and a diatribe against a grand old man (Brahms), Adès is ever his own man.
Contents and tracklist
- Susan Bickley (mezzo-soprano)
- City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus
- Thomas Adès
- Recorded: 2002-03-28
- Recording Venue: 28 March 2002. Symphony Hall, Birmingham.
- Stephen Layton/Polyphony, Teddy Layton (lead vocals), Polyphony (lead vocals)
- Recorded: 2003-02-08
- Recording Venue: 7 & 8 February 2003. The Temple Church, London.
- Tom Poster (piano), Hugh Webb (harp), Richard Benjafield (percussion)
- Recorded: 2003-02-08
- Recording Venue: 7 & 8 February 2003. The Temple Church, London.
- Stephen Layton/Polyphony/Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, Teddy Layton (lead vocals), Polyphony (lead vocals), Christopher Bowers-Broadbent (lead vocals)
- Recorded: 2003-02-08
- Recording Venue: 7 & 8 February 2003. The Temple Church, London.
- Stephen Layton/Polyphony, Teddy Layton (lead vocals), Polyphony (lead vocals)
- Recorded: 2003-02-08
- Recording Venue: 7 & 8 February 2003. The Temple Church, London.
- Huw Watkins (lead vocals), Robin Blaze (lead vocals)
- Recorded: 2003-10-04
- Recording Venue: 26 June & 4 October 2003. LSO St. Luke's, London.
- Claron McFadden (soprano)
- Composers Ensemble
- Thomas Adès
- Recorded: 2003-10-04
- Recording Venue: 26 June & 4 October 2003. LSO St. Luke's, London.
- Composers Ensemble (lead vocals)
- Thomas Adès
- Recorded: 2003-10-04
- Recording Venue: 26 June & 4 October 2003. LSO St. Luke's, London.
- Composers Ensemble
- Thomas Adès
- Recorded: 2003-10-04
- Recording Venue: 26 June & 4 October 2003. LSO St. Luke's, London.
- Christopher Maltman (bass-baritone)
- City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
- Thomas Adès
- Recorded: 2002-03-28
- Recording Venue: 28th March 2002, Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Awards and reviews
January 2018
Adès’s take on a Madness song about a stressed businessman is a hoot. Although Adès apparently did it from memory, it’s fairly accurate, right down to the piano’s cluster chords.
