Adès: Alchymia

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The opening movement, ‘A Sea-Change’, refers to the part in Shakespeare’s The Tempest when the king's eyes are transformed by water into pearls; the oil-and-vinegar interplay between clarinet... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2023, 5 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 4 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

Release Date: 13th Oct 2023
Catalogue No: ORC100264
Label: Orchid Classics
Length: 23 minutes

Presto Editor's Choice

October 2023

Adès: Alchymia

Work length23:29

$5.00

$6.50

$8.75

Mark Simpson (clarinet)
Quatuor Diotima

I. A Sea-Change (…Those Are Pearls…)

Track length5:08

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

II. The Woods So Wild

Track length3:10

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

III. Lachrymae

Track length6:31

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

IV. Divisions on a Lute-Song

Track length8:40

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

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A star-studded world premiere recording of Alchymia by Thomas Adès, a 2021 quintet for basset clarinet and strings composed for clarinettist-composer Mark Simpson and Quatuor Diotima.

'one of Adès’s finest achievements of recent years.’

The Guardian on Alchymia's London premiere

Reviews

December 2023

The opening movement, ‘A Sea-Change’, refers to the part in Shakespeare’s The Tempest when the king's eyes are transformed by water into pearls; the oil-and-vinegar interplay between clarinet and strings is a colourful swirl that never properly integrates. So far, so Adès. The following movements take us into more complex spaces.

December 2023

Simpson, and his part, evokes every clarinet actor in the book, from lugubrious poet to honking roué, like a quick-change cabaret artist or Andrew Scott in the recent Uncle Vanya.

October 2023

Adès's first chamber-work in a decade has to be one of his most engrossing creations to date. Drawing inspiration from Dowland, Byrd and Berg as well as from Shakespeare's The Tempest, it's appropriately rich and strange, and wears its intertextuality lightly - Byrd's The Woods So Wild takes on a new life in the intricate, gleefully scuttling scherzo (Simpson's agility here is breathtaking) and the Diotimas sound for all the world like a viol consort in the haunting Lachrymae.

22nd October 2023

What a fascinating and hauntingly beautiful piece it is. A Sea-Change, all descending registers and spectral atmospherics; the scurrying, Byrd-quoting The Woods so Wild; Lachrymae’s evocation of the first Elizabethan age; the Lulu-lifting Divisions on a Lute-Song, plangent cello dive-bombed by skittish, woozy clarinet. Stunning.

Adès: Alchymia

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