Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

ABC Classics is proud to announce the Australian premiere recording of Polaris - Voyage for Orchestra by cutting-edge British composer Thomas Adès. Recorded live in concert by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Markus Stenz, this major work from one of the top composers of our time is now available as part of the MSO Live series.

Polaris, says Adès, explores the use of star constellations for navigation across the oceans, and the emotional navigation between the absent sailors and what they leave behind. The music is derived from a magnetic series, a musical device created by Adès and heard here for the first time: all the notes of the scale are gradually presented, but persistently return home to an anchoring pitch, as if magnetised.

Also on this disc is the world premiere recording of award-winning Australian composer Paul Stanhope's Piccolo Concerto. The piccolo rarely gets the chance to step into the spotlight, but this extraordinary piece reveals it to be an instrument capable of sweetness and poetry as well as strength and agility. The concerto's first movement explores in music the theme of compassion in the face of hostility; the second is a wild, high-spirited dance celebrating the speed of the information age. With conductor Benjamin Northey and piccolo soloist Andrew Macleod, it was an electrifying night in the concert hall, and ABC Classics is thrilled to make it available now on CD.

1. Hymn -- 2. Scherzo: "Wheels within Wheels".