February is always special when composer/conductor Thomas Adès is wintering in Los Angeles with the LA Phil. Once again we will hear a new orchestral work by him. Aquifer (2024) closes the concert with 17 minutes of fast-moving mystery—the force of underground water—a big quivering mass of sound ending in C major. Opening is the U.S. premiere of William Mersey’s 2023 symphonic treatment of a luscious figurative oil painting by Salman Toor—Man with Limp Wrist in eight pithy sections with such provocative titles as: “The Texter”, “Ghost Story”, “Bar Boy”, and “The After Party”. The tech savvy 36-year old Brit’s music has been described as vivid and strangely touching, droll and understated.

Sandwiched between the new pieces are two less-often performed major Russian standouts: Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s tone poem Francesca da Rimini. The great pianist Yuja Wang is the protagonist in a brooding landscape in which she is “unrelentingly excellent, building sinister tension like a scientist” according to The Mercury News. The tremendous sometimes pompous grandeur, acrid-textures, wit, incredible speed, and tempestuous sweep makes this is my favorite Prokofiev concerto. Francesca da Rimini is among Adès’s conducting specialties—once popular now almost forgotten showpieces like Respighi’s Feste Romane—full of carnage, thrills, and big tunes. Given the subject of doomed lovers is from Dante’s Inferno, which is the name of Adès’s popular full-length ballet score, his fans can listen here for flame-throwing resonance alternating with poignant tenderness. This concert is a high calorie affair.