Royal Albert Hall, London
Simon Rattle, with his new German orchestra, brought Thomas Adès’s Aquifer to vivid life in its UK premiere, and held the audience rapt in a lucid and light-on-its-feet reading of Bruckner’s fourth symphony

It’s a brave composer that goes head-to-head with Anton Bruckner in his bicentenary year, especially when a German band is in town. That Thomas Adès’s Aquifer, led by Simon Rattle making his first Proms appearance as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, held its own is a testament to two of Britain’s most consistently original talents.

Aquifer, here receiving its UK premiere, takes its name from an underground layer of permeable rock through which water seeps and flows. Adès’s music duly oozes and gushes, with string lines that echo waveforms, brass tectonics that slither and slide, and woodwind that seems to bubble up through the cracks.