Thomas Adès has enjoyed enormous visibility since first emerging as a composer in the early 1990s. He quickly dazzled thanks to the confidence with which he discovered his unique voice, with scarcely a pause to clear his throat. His Asyla (1997), a compact four-movement symphony, is immense not only in its scoring for large orchestra but in the emotional range it telescopes into its deceptively brief duration. Adès choice of title is typically suggestive and mysterious - Asyla is the Latin plural of "asylum," which can mean both a place of inviolable refuge and an institution for the insane. The beauty of Asyla is how it plays on this plurality of meaning without devolving into a chaos of too-muchness [notes by Thomas May]. Watch a performance of the third movement of Thomas Adès Asyla played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle  . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Stephen Petronio’s I Drink the Air Before Me (2009), with music by Nico Muhly, begins where none of his other dances have: aboard a ship. Scrim in the shape of a sail is pinned to one side of the stage; the choreographer, with the costuming help of the artist Cindy Sherman, is its craggy, bearded captain, dressed in a nautical jacket, chaps and rubber hip boots over jeans. Named after a line from Shakespeare’s Tempest, the dance is inspired by a raging storm. Like Petronio's choreography, the score, by Nico Muhly, evokes turbulent undercurrents in which the frantic sounds of flute and strings are woven with the more tumultuous notes of a trombone and piano. Without being literal, the music and choreography create a sonic, ephemeral wave. The bulk of I Drink the Air Before Me assembles Petronio's usual tools: ferocious speed, rigorous structure and dancers who ravel and unravel like ribbons. Groups of bodies swell and dissipate like squalls, though while the scene is frequently forceful, the relentless choreography is only part of the picture. Petronio’s movement also reverberates as an energetic echo, moving past the physical form to etch invisible lines and patterns onto his canvas, the stage. Amanda Wells, arching her back, swirls her legs and arms as if swept by wind. Gino Grenek whips his body across the stage like a funnel cloud. And Shila Tirabassi, a force of nature herself, elongates her reach with every movement to impart sensual fluidity. When the violent rush of bodies threatens to overwhelm, Mr. Petronio calms things down. The Young People’s Chorus of New York City joins the dancers onstage to sing the work’s choral finale, One Day Tells Its Tale to Another. Their innocence softens the fury; the sea is finally still, and Petronio has weathered a perfect storm [Gia Kourlas, The New York Times]. Watch an excerpt from I Drink the Air Before Me . . . it's this week DANSES PYTHEUSES.

According to composer Amy Scurria, her Five Haiku (1998) "is somewhat of a tragic love story, in which the man is singing about a woman who exists not in his life, but very strongly in his mind, and only in his mind. He has been touched by this woman and cannot let her go from his memory. He sings about all of the emotions, both beautiful and painful that her memory evokes. He is terribly saddened without her and yet her imprint that she has left on him is so strong that he knows he is wonderfully changed forever by her. Although the title of the piece is Five Haiku and is set to five haiku, the piece opens and closes with a poem. Five Haiku is a story about longing and letting go. We seem to always be longing for something and in a certain way it is that longing that keeps us striving forward to reach that unobtainable goal. However, when that longing stifles us and causes us to turn around and to cease facing forward, it is then that the longing must be let go of and there must be a realization that everything in our lives, no matter how wonderful or how horrible, can ultimately change us in the most wonderful ways that we often don't even recognize." Listen to a performance of Amy Scurria's Five Haiku  . . .  it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

. . . and check out Miles Hoffman and Alberto Parrini playing Walter Piston's Duo for Viola and Violoncello (1949) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.