In a recent Gramophone interview (5/20), Thomas Adès conjured the image of Gerald Barry ‘prowling around rehearsals with a metronome in hand: one of those things that quickens every conductor’s pulse!’ This struck me in listening to these discs, for despite their unrelenting manic energy, there’s a meticulousness to Adès’s accounts of Barry’s music that’s largely missing from his Beethoven. Indeed, it’s astonishing that these recordings of Barry’s Beethoven (2008) and Piano Concerto (2012) were each taken from a single live performance. The former work, an unsettling setting of Beethoven’s letters to his ‘dearly beloved’, has been recorded once before – and superbly – by the baritone Stephen Richardson with Paul Hillier leading the Crash Ensemble (Orchid, 9/16). Truth be told, there’s not much to choose between it and this new version, as both communicate Beethoven’s inner turmoil in bidding farewell to his romantic idol. Richardson’s portrayal is gruffly dramatic while Mark Stone is at once more ardent and disorientated, plus his diction is clearer.

There’s an even higher level of anxiety in the Concerto, with soloist and orchestra appearing more like foaming-at-the-mouth antagonists than collaborators. As in Beethoven, there’s abundant humour, although it’s quite dark. Listen, say, at 0'59", where the pianist scampers up the keyboard like the cartoon mouse Jerry playing Czerny while pursued by a pouncing Tom, and then how the full orchestra takes up this idea at 18'57" in a way that suggests paroxysms of utter terror. Although the music often moves in fits and starts, there’s barely a chance for the listener to catch breath – and, curiously, that’s part of its appeal. ‘He’s the only composer who knows how to write war music’, Adès told Peter Quantrill in the aforementioned interview, ‘music that’s frightening and full of rage.’ True, perhaps, but there’s palpable (and paradoxical) joy in this barrage of fury, too, and it’s what draws me to listen again and again. Nicolas Hodges, for whom the work was written, plays the bejesus out of it.

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about Adès’s Beethoven. His interpretations of the first three symphonies are crisp, clear and lithely muscular, hewing close to the composer’s metronome markings. He’s attuned to the music’s myriad harmonic and textural surprises, yet too often his single-minded pursuit of energy and impetus comes at the expense of lyricism. The Andante of the First and Larghetto of the Second are both too cool and brittle for my taste, for example, and although there’s plenty of raw emotion in the Eroica’s funeral march, I don’t feel the maggiore sections provide that crucial sense of magical, melting transformation. That said, the opening movement of the Eroica had me on the edge of my seat. The quasi-fugal passage at 7'03" is thrillingly taut and the subsequent crunching climax (beginning at 7'30") packs plenty of power without losing a degree of momentum. And listen to the Britten Sinfonia’s violins at 11'12", where one can almost hear the rosin spraying off their bows.

I think if I were to hear these Beethoven performances in the concert hall, I’d come away feeling reasonably satisfied (if somewhat exhausted), but I can’t say I’m all that eager to return to them. Adès’s spirit and drive capture the youthful exuberance of these works but I can think of other zesty, historically informed readings – Krivine, for one (Naïve, 7/11) – that illuminate with a broader beam.