Adès in Your Neighborhood

We went to a concert in our neighborhood tonight, a performance by the Calder String Quartet.  It was a free concert, in a church a few blocks away.  The chief attraction was Thomas Adès's string quartet, "The Four Quarters", written last year.  It was absolutely engaging;  Adès has genuine musical ideas that build on tradition and yet sound new and fresh.  The music strikes me as more succinct and clear than his earlier works.  I can't think of any other contemporary composer whose work I look more forward to hearing.  The quartet performance was excellent, (they have worked closely with Adès)   The Adès was preceded by Stravinky's "Three Pieces for String Quartet", which sounded Webernian in their brevity, and followed by a sensuous performance of Ravel's String Quartet.   A beautifully balanced program.   (The Calder Quartet played in last September in Vancouver.)