Presto Editor's Choice
June 2020

BBC Music Magazine
September 2020
Instrumental Choice

Kirill Gerstein (piano), Thomas Adès (piano/conductor), Tanglewood Music Centre Orchestra

Adès: Powder Her Face: Concert Paraphrase
Adès: Berceuse (from The Exterminating Angel)
Adès: Mazurkas for Piano, Op. 27
Adès: In Seven Days

Kirill Gerstein’s decade long relationship with British composer and pianist Thomas Adès is reflected through this latest release from myrios classics. Recorded in the luxurious acoustics of the Symphony Hall in Boston, the three Mazurkas for solo piano feature alongside the world premiere recordings of Berceuse from The Exterminating Angel and the concert paraphrase on Powder Her Face for two pianos performed with the composer. Together with these works is In Seven Days for piano and orchestra which anticipated Adès’s recent piano concerto written, like Berceuse, especially for Kirill. The live performance was captured in the Seiji Ozawa Hall as part of the 2018 Tanglewood Music Festival, with Adès conducting the Tanglewood Music Centre Orchestra.

"For Gerstein this music, like Beethoven and Bach’s has become part of his DNA, the difference being that with this living composer he can discuss details of performance…This recording makes an exhilarating hour of beauty and strangeness…Gerstein describes In Seven Days as being about the birth of the universe – but for me it’s simply a triumphant cavalcade of delicately glittering and gloriously sensuous effects." - BBC Music Magazine, September 2020.