Thomas Adès’s Piano Quintet (2000) is a vivid reimagining of sonata form (complete with exposition repeat). Whilst its themes are recognizably tonal, these simple building blocks are the starting points for rich and intricate processes of transformation. The long exposition is full of subtle metrical juxtapositions, with the piano and string quartet often playing in different time signatures simultaneously, creating a disorienting sense that the music is continually shifting in and out of temporal focus. After the extremes of the central development section, the recapitulation is a gigantic accelerando which speeds up to four times the original speed, and generates enormous, seemingly unstoppable momentum. The effect is of a dramatic and temporal compression: it is as if the whole work were squeezed into this musical black hole.
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