Michael Brook’s Cobalt Blue album from 1992 has just been re-released by 4AD, bringing his form of studied guitar ambience to new audiences, while reminding those who listened the first time around just how good it is.
Brook played the ‘infinite guitar’, an instrument he created that could sustain notes indefinitely. He was joined by ambient music royalty, with Brian and Roger Eno contributing, along with Daniel Lanois. The result is a rather beautiful long-form composition dividing nicely into 12 parts. The second, Breakdown, is particularly blissful:
Liszt Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S110 No. 2 (1856-61) Adès Dante, Part 2: Purgatorio (2019-20) Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Op.14 (1830)
Symphony Hall, Birmingham Wednesday 5 August 2026
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) Tom Morley
If there is little space remaining on an extended Symphony Hall platform, the National Youth Orchestra is the likely reason. Tonight saw the start of its annual summer tour with a typically demanding programme that played to the strengths of some 150 players in no small measure.
All three of these pieces are focussed upon a journey of unforeseen consequences, not least Liszt’s First Mephisto Waltz. Setting a swift tempo for its propulsive initial section, Thomas Adès ensured the performance had the measure of this and of those halting evocations at its centre. If the sudden build-up to its climax felt a little tentative, the ensuing pensiveness and hectic coda (this being the more familiar loud ending) found these musicians comfortably in control. A showpiece with substance that deserves to regain its popularity from former times.
Adès’s ballet Dante has been often heard on stage or in concert. Its central Purgatorio makes a journey from out of darkness towards light, recordings of three sung prayers made the basis for its musical evolution. This would be fine were that evolution more varied in progress and more cumulative in impact. As it was, samples of this chanting were elaborated by woodwind and brass, singly or in ‘choirs’, before drawing to a climax on full orchestra. That this process was several times repeated would not have mattered had it been less systematic or predictable, while the actual writing had (surprisingly) little subtlety or finesse to offset its brazen impact. Whatever Adès’s orchestral command or the NYO’s commitment in realizing it, the result felt not so far removed from Wojciech Kilar’s folk-inspired symphonic poems half a century ago.
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is a work that has featured often on NYO schedules, but its music is tailor-made for an orchestra with not a few aspiring professionals to demonstrate its capabilities, and the present performance did not disappoint. Favouring relatively swift tempi, Adès steered an impulsive if never wayward course through Rêveries – Passions; at its best in the approach to a searing climax followed by its pensive ‘come down’. He found the right balance between elegance and ecstasy in Un bal (but this was not a waltz for dancing), then traversed Scène aux champs with due focus on that mounting despair which emerges out of then returns to the soulful isolation either side. The thunder effects of multiple timpani at its close were well realized, while the cor anglais (Leah Wiseman) summoned a melting pathos.
Steady if not unduly portentous (with, as in the first movement, its repeat included), ‘Marche au supplice’ made a properly baleful impact – not least through the addition of military drums after the fall of the guillotine – but it was a pity Adès did not head straight into Songe d’une nuit de sabbat, whose initial silence then feels more deafening. That said, he had the measure of its sardonic parodies of earlier themes, evocations of gothic horror and fugal orgies on the way to an apotheosis during which the NYO gave its collective all then some more besides.
The result was a performance that could not have failed to impress those unfamiliar with this singular work. Doubtless the programme overall will sound equally impressive with the NYO repeating in at Snape Maltings tomorrow evening, then at the Royal Albert Hall this Saturday.
To read more about the NYO’s 2026 summer tour, visit the NYO website – and click on the name to read more about composer & conductor Thomas Adès
Often regarded as the original ambient tracks, Erik Satie’s Trois Gymnopédies are much-loved across the genres – and have been since their composition in 1888. Any ‘peaceful piano’ playlist on the digital service platforms is likely to include one of these three pieces, and if it doesn’t will include music falling under their influence.
Part of this is their accessibility, for they are relatively easy to play on the piano…but they are also difficult to get right, for each one casts a particular spell. The simple melodies are deceptively emotive, qualities that Anne Queffélec brings to the fore here:
I still know far too little of Pat Metheny‘s work, but a very good friend – whose musical taste I trust implicitly – introduced me to some of his work made for ECM in the late 1970s. It has stuck with me, but in particular the New Chautauqua album of 1978, which contains this sunny yet hypnotic composition:
James Braddell has been remarkably prolific under this pseudonym – so with plenty more to explore, I’ll leave a high point from his Fast Asleep album on Ninja Tune from 2002. Very deep indeed…
Arcana.fm 