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Adès: America-A Prophecy (EMI disc) (America-A Prophecy; Fool’s Rhymes; O thou who didst with pitfall and with gin; The Fayrfax Carol; January Writ; Life Story; The Lover in Winter; Cardiac Arrest; Les baricades mystèrieuses; Brahms) 'For his text and his theme...[in the 16-minute America: A Prophecy]... [Adés] chose to look not ahead but back, to the stable Mayan civilization of half a millennium before, and its destruction by conquerors and looters from abroad. He drew upon ancient writings (including La Guerra by the 16th-century Mateo Flecha) and on later texts sympathetic to the fate of the Mayans. "O my nation, prepare," sings a mezzo-soprano in a twisted line resonant with ancient sounds, her voice rising out of an opening orchestral bombardment full of terrified shrieks and tongues of flame. "The people move as in dreams! They are weak from fuck and drink . . ." She sings of invaders from the east, who destroy and burn. "They will come from the east," the chorus sings. "They will burn all the sky." "Ash feels no pain," responds the soloist... ... Long after the facts it uncannily portends, [it] still has its dark overtones. That has to do mostly with the writing for the solo mezzo... which is pained and intense... [yet] this is music of tremendous power. Percussion predominates; the sounds wrench and pound... [The remainder of the disc]... draws a nice picture of a composer of admirable curiosity at his cluttered desk, busily trying things out: a bit of Omar Khayyam, a wise line or two from John Donne, a snatch of Tennessee Williams erotica, a Couperin harpsichord number ingeniously transcribed for chamber ensemble, Cardiac Arrest and, finally, Brahms.... [totalling] an interesting variorum of short works.' LA weekly (Alan Rich), April 23 -29 2004 ‘The more we hear of the music of the British wunderkind Thomas Adès, the more extraordinary his creative gift appears. To listen to this new compilation of orchestral, chamber and vocal music by the 33-year-old composer is to be stunned by the range and depth of his writing, by his virtuoso handling of orchestration, melody and form, and by the sheer communicative power of his work. The headline work is a grimly potent jeremiad for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra about the downfall of a civilization (Mayan poetry does the trick); it was commissioned for the millennium by Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic, who were probably hoping for something a little more, um, life-affirming. Tough luck – Adès’s prophetic style is as grand and uncompromising as his subject demands, and the results are breathtaking. But the rest of the disc is no less captivating, from the austere beauty of "The Lover in Winter," a song cycle for countertenor based on medieval Latin texts, to the craggy expressionism of "Brahms," an orchestral song to a poem by pianist Alfred Brendel. Adès’s stylistic range is extraordinary, too: There are choral biblical settings, a jazzy scat version of a dopey text by Tennessee Williams and back-to-back arrangements of music by the rock group Madness and French Baroque master François Couperin. Is there nothing the man can't do? It doesn't seem so.’ ‘If the hype surrounding Adès has tended to detract from his substance as a composer, the best of the works here have a durability likely to transcend any merely superficial impression.’ 'The main attraction of EMI's latest Thomas Adès programme America: A Prophecy (5 57610 2 ) is the quarter-hour "cover piece", a starkly scored ear-stinger grounded in Mayan music with harmonious echoes from 16th-century Spain breaking through just before the six-minute mark. The CBSO and Chorus seem to have Adès's distinctive brand of ordered chaos on tap. Try the ominous aural silhouettes that close in from around 2:30 into the second part, the fragile pianissimos and pounding ostinatos, the mezzo Susan Bickley sounding as if driven to madness by prophesies of fallen gods, fathers, children and cites. The segue to a Britten-style Fayrfax Carol is utterly seamless, while tucked in among the rest are two ingenious transcriptions, the obsessively grunting Cardiac Arrest (after the band Madness) and a mellow though fastidious recreation of François Couperin's Les Baricades shared among members of the Composer's Ensemble.'
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