In Seven Days

Did You Know?

• The optional video accompaniment was created by Adès's then partner Tal Rosner.
• A recording of the piece performed by Nicolas Hodges and the London Sinfonietta was released through Signum records on January 31, 2012.

Music

In Seven Days has a duration of roughly 28 minutes and is composed in seven movements. The movements musically recount each of the seven days of the Biblical creation narrative as detailed in the Book of Genesis. The work is scored for solo piano and a large orchestra comprising three flutes (2nd doubling alto flute and piccolo; 3rd doubling piccolo), three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, four percussionists, and strings.

Reception

In Seven Days has been praised by music critics. Reviewing the United States premiere, Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times wrote, 'Full of the life of our own times yet so rooted in the past that it feels like family, Ades' music operates on so many different parts of the brain at once that it overpowers critical faculties... In Seven Days occupies a more mature space than the earlier works. But the freshness has not grown stale.' Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called the piece 'terrific' and observed, 'As the creation saga unfolds, the music is at once reverent and playful. Galumphing basses and low brass evoke the creatures of the land, while twittering flutes and crazed piccolo announce the creatures of the sky. Long episodes evolve in arcs of brilliant piano writing where restless, filigreed, spiraling figures cascade down the keyboard.' George Hall of The Guardian opined, 'Adès possesses the gift of producing striking and immediate ideas that are nevertheless subtly ambiguous in their impact. Here, the Copland-like simplicity of the opening gestures forms a platform for successive processes of variation, development and contrast that eventually return to their starting point.' Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle called it 'a vividly evocative musical-visual creation' and wrote, 'In Seven Days is both dramatic and reflective, by turns ingratiatingly accessible and dauntingly abstruse. It seems to want to embrace the whole world — a fitting goal for the creation story — and yet it remains winningly approachable.' The music was similarly praised by Andy Gill of The Independent, Ivan Hewett of The Daily Telegraph, and Richard Whitehouse of Gramophone. Conversely, Niels Swinkels of the San Francisco Classical Voice criticized the piece, remarking, 'Unfortunately, all I heard was one banal idea morphing into the next, vague references to symphonic rock or to movie soundtracks, endless, rippling motion up and down unimaginative scale progressions...'