LSO/Adès at the Barbican - 2012
Full concert regalia, enthusiastic conducting, trim facial hair: Thomas Adès seems to appear
more like Henry Wood every day. Not that the venerated Proms founder appears to loom
over his music, though Adès’s range of reference as a composer is wide enough, both in
subject and style. This tumultuous concert with the London Symphony Orchestra used a
platform full of beavering musicians to duplicate the world’s biblical Creation.
Tevot (from 2007) is an immensely- powerful meditation on the Earth as our hearth and
home, a safe haven in a chaotic cosmos. It was all very humbling. Adès’s command of a large
orchestra’s resources is supreme: in building and executing a symphonic argument there’s
not a living composer to top him. Tevot alone gives proof enough with its masterful mix of
continuity and disruption. During its voyaging the heavens are hit, the sea bottom scraped;
then, eventually, against superfine strings, the music settles into a winding melody,
comforting as a cradle, safely carrying its precious charge like Moses’ reed basket or Noah’s
Ark.
The LSO, immaculately drilled and polished, guided us with equal safety — as they did
earlier through Adès’s slightly later In Seven Days (2008). Stripped for once of Tal Rosner’s
video component (six screens of pulsing waves, circles, blobs and spindles), the musical
tapestry of shifting patterns easily survived as a vital, stand-alone concert piece.
Nicolas Hodges, the piano soloist, masterfully threaded his way from chaos to living
creatures. Adès, too, gave it his all, as he does every piece that he conducts: big gestures, big
grins, with every dynamic jolt and emotional shiver felt in the bones.
Placed alongside these peaks, the programme’s other items could only shrivel. Hidd’n Blue,
four-and-a-half minutes from the young Spanish-born Francisco Coll (Adès’s only
composition pupil to date) still swirled and juddered with an exuberant orchestral
imagination, a good portent for the composer’s future.
Geoff Brown, The Times, 16 January 2012
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra - June 2011
"... the combination of him [Ades] and the passionate playing of the orchestra made for an
extremely exciting evening"
"The applause included some enthusiastic cheers. The Concertgebouw had connected with
the youth".
Bela Luttmer, Volkskrant, 21 June 2011
" [In Vermeulen's De Vliegende Hollander (1930)] Ades held everything in perfect balance
with clear and sprightly gestures"
"As a conductor, Ades demonstrates that his music is refined but never sounds complicated:
a master conductor of his own masterpieces"
Jochem Valkenburg, NRC, 18 June 2011
“Three Dutch premières of Thomas Adès’s music, as well as his debut as a conductor for the
Concertgebouworkest certainly made an inspiring billing. Fortunately my expectations were
not only met, it turned out to be a magical evening.
…This was one of those concerts that make the listener, or at least me, glad to be alive and
very grateful to having been there. Thomas Adès is rightly considered one of the most
talented composers of our age, and it will surprise (and mostly disappoint) me if all three of
these works do not become part of the standard orchestral repertoire.”
Renée Reitsma, BachTrack.com, 19 June 2011
Boston Symphony Orchestra – March 2011
Though only 40, Adès has already built an accomplished international career, writing nimble
music that manages to steer clear of both neo-Romantic pandering on the one hand and
egghead esotericism on the other, speaking with an expressive directness to listeners while at
the same time catching the ear with the scope of its invention. Two fine examples of his work
are on display this week with the composer leading his Violin Concerto and scenes from his
opera, “The Tempest.’’
The concerto opens with a movement of hurtling virtuosity, the soloist tracing spiraling lines
in the very upper reaches of the instrument. The weighty middle movement suggests antique
forms grown jagged, modern ruins of music’s baroque past, with some closing paragraphs of
darkly haunting beauty before the last movement dances off in suave insouciance.
…The composer last night led four scenes from this alluring score, ending with a bewitching
love duet between Miranda and Ferdinand, the singers weaving their lines above a
diaphanous orchestra.
Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe, March 26, 2011