Poul Ruders' Concerto in Pieces, one of the most witty and brilliant orchestral works to appear in recent years, already has been released by Bridge on a disc containing Melinda Wagner's Flute Concerto, but here it appears more aptly coupled to music by this brilliant and always rewarding composer. Fairytale only lives up to its name if you think of the terrifying examples by the Brothers Grimm: it's a 10-minute orchestral tornado inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen tale called "The Story of the Wind". Behind the wildness you can clearly hear just how well calculated the piece really is, with carefully positioned points of contrast, and it's not a note too long.

The Second Piano Sonata, magnificently played here by Thomas Adès in a concert performance from the Aldeburgh Festival, is the longest piece on the disc, lasting some 25 minutes. Although not conventionally melodic, the musical materials are largely tonal and harmonically quite beautiful, particularly in the finale which consists of block chords that cleverly exploit the entire coloristic range of the keyboard. I particularly enjoyed the jazzy third movement, a sort of demented encounter between Ruders and Vince Guaraldi. De Profundis, for two pianos and percussion, lives up to its title in that it pursues a steady course from low sounds to high, beginning darkly, in the depths, but ending ethereally and gently. Quattro Mani and percussionist David Colson also play extremely well, seeming to have a great time with the work's fascinating timbral combinations (you gotta love those gongs).

Although these performances all stem from different venues, the sonics are uniformly outstanding. If I have any complaint, it's that the presence of an audience, however considerate, detracts somewhat from the sonata's very quiet second movement--but in all other respects the engineering is as superb as are the performances. Ruders is one of those composers that you simply can't take for granted; he's always surprising, always interesting, and always worth waiting for. If you're into good contemporary music, you'll need this disc. [9/22/2004]

--David Hurwitz