Since 2023 Thomas Adès has been artist-in-residence with the Hallé Orchestra. He has featured as composer, conductor and pianist in his appearances with the orchestra, and all his concerts have included new or nearly new works, both his own and by composers he admires. As the residency comes to an end, this collection brings together pieces he has conducted in Manchester; there are four by Adès himself, alongside William Marsey’s Man With Limp Wrist and Oliver Leith’s Cartoon Sun.

Of the four pieces by Adès, only one is substantial. Aquifer, which he wrote last year for Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, is a densely packed 17-minute movement, which contains enough ideas to power a symphony at least twice as long, before being brought to a halt by the most common-or-garden of cadences. Tower – for Frank Gehry is a fanfare, and both Shanty and Dawn, composed during lockdown in 2020, are pieces that work wonders with repeated phrases. Marsey’s musical narrative, in eight “scenes”, is a strangely evocative succession of musical ghosts, inspired by paintings by Salman Toor, while Leith’s wacky processional, punctuated by enormous climaxes, leaves an exhilarating impression.

It’s altogether an impressive disc, a fine record of a productive association, though it’s a shame there was no room on it for the exceptional performance of his own Tevot that Adès conducted in Bridgewater Hall too.

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