First performed by Imogen Cooper at the Cheltenham Festival, Thomas Adès’s Traced Overhead (1995-6) unfolds in three movements of progressively increasing length. The first, ‘Sursum’ (the Latin adverb of upward motion), is marked velocissimo quasi senza peso (very fast, as if without weight), and lasts for under a minute. In ‘Aetheria’ the atmosphere is expanded and the ascent is continued before the movement ends with a massive, controlled s...