Catch Op.4 (1991)

There is no more accomplished or more talented musician than Thomas Adès working in Britain today. Indeed – taking his activities as pianist, conductor and festival director as well as composer into account – the most apt comparison seems to be Benjamin Britten, who occupied a similar position a generation or two earlier. Catch is a fairly early work but a fascinating example of both his extraordinarily sensitive ear for instrumental sonority and his structural imagination. A score with a strong dramatic or even scenic element in its continuity, it could almost have been called three instruments in search of a fourth. This is how, less fancifully, the composer describes it: “Catch structures itself around various combinations of the four instruments. There are several games going on: at the start, the clarinet is the outsider, the other three are the unit; then, after a decoy entry, the clarinet takes the initiative. All four then play jovial ‘pig-in-the-middle’ with each other. The clarinet is then phased out leaving a sullen piano and cello, with interjections based on the clarinet’s original tune. This slower passage gradually mutates back into fast music, and this time the game is in earnest: the piano is squeezed out, only to lure the clarinet finally into the snare of its own music.”