In Seven Days receives 4 star reviews from The Times and The Independent.
London Sinfonietta's lastest release In Seven Days has received 4 star reviews from both The Times and The Independent. Read the full reviews below.
The Independent, Friday 16 December
Review by Andy Gill, ****
Thomas Adès' take on the Biblical creation-myth in the seven-part "video-ballet" In Seven Days focuses on processes rather than things, shifting from the rising string motif, clotted piano and woodwind, and epic horns of "Chaos - Light - Dark", through successive hierarchies of order to the calm satisfaction of "Contemplation".
In "Separation", the piano part seems bifurcated, heading in two directions, evocative of mighty forces tearing apart; the contrasting registers recur later in "Contemplation", but the sense of rending is replaced by one of balance and completeness; in between, the various expanding, hyperactive instrumental lines suggest the proliferation of life.
It's as absorbing as always with Adès, and accompanied here by four-handed piano transcriptions of a couple of Conlon Nancarrow's player-piano studies performed by Adès with Rolf Hind, rippling blends of exuberance and rumination.
The Times, Friday 16 December
Review by Geoff Brown, ****
Want something different for Christmas? Have you considered construction scaffolding, the Festival Hall light fittings, a lift's machinery and the surface of the Thames? These are among the mundane materials used by the British/Israeli film-maker Tal Rosner in the visual layer of In Seven Days, the ingenious, far from mundane video-ballet composed by Britain's musical volcano Thomas Adès... You can buy it now as a CD/DVD package from Signum Classics, the new CD home of the music's crack performers, the London Sinfonietta.
Created to celebrate the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the refurbishment of our own Royal Festival Hall, this half-hour creation narrative seemed attractive but faintly underwhelming at its 2008 London premiere. Its force became diffused in the spaces between the Sinfonietta's busy ensemble, the industrious commentary from Nicolas Hodges's piano, and images divided across six screens. Happily that's not the case on the DVD. Locked in at home, the force is concentrated. Now you revel as shape, rhythm and dynamics interact and seven sections take us from watery chaos (the Thames digitally enhanced) through the creation of land, vegetation and living things to a final day of contemplation.
Like alchemists, Adès and Rosner transform basic elements into a glittering wonder. Best-known in Britain for his title sequence to Channel 4s series Skins, Rosner's styling here often harks back to the abstract patterning of the 1920s European film avant-garde. But not in a spirit of dusty homage; all is exuberance as blobs dance, circles pulse and spindles multiply into an emerald jungle, in perfect time to the mounting waves of Adès' score. An exciting creation about creation: that's In Seven Days.
Adès himself conducts the Sinfonietta. He's also featured along with Rolf Hind as an heroic pianist, navigating the complex rhythms of two Studies by Conlon Nancarrow, originally punched out on piano rolls for reproduction on player-pianos. No 6, gentle and slight, doesn't quite suit the visual accompaniment, a fancy version of TV interference. But Rosner and Sophie Clements' ballet of circles, triangles and squares only amplify the fun of the epic No 7, an intoxicating pyramid of clashing rhythms. Bold and delightful, this release would make an admirable gift for a discerning Christmas stocking.
