Incisive…and commanding.

—New York Times

Program

JANÁČEK: On an Overgrown Path, Book 2
LISZT/WAGNER: Isoldes Liebestod
PROKOFIEV: Sarcasmes
SCHUBERT: Allegretto in C minor
ADÈS: Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face (US Premiere)*
BEETHOVEN: Bagatelles, Op. 126

ENCORE:
LISZT: Valse Oubliée No. 1
PROKOFIEV: Visions Fugitives, Op. 22: XI. Con vivacita
COUPERIN: Les Baricades Mistérieuses

*Commissioned by Vancouver Recital Society, San Francisco Performances and The Barbican, London.

About This Performance

British composer/pianist Thomas Adès brings a composer’s insight and style to musical treasures
not often heard by today’s audiences. His bountiful charm and passion prompted the New York Times to exclaim, “no one can fairly question that this…Englishman is among the most accomplished all-around musicians of his generation.”

Links/Downloads

ARTIST biography

Renowned as both a composer and a performer, Thomas Adès works regularly with the world’s leading orchestras, opera companies and festivals. Appointed to the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair at Carnegie Hall for 2007/8, he was featured as composer, conductor and pianist throughout that season.

Adès’ most recent work, a ‘Piano concerto with moving image’ entitled In Seven Days, was a collaboration with video artist Tal Rosner and was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and London’s Southbank Centre. The world premiere, with the composer conducting the London Sinfonietta, was given at the Royal Festival Hall in April 2008, and in May 2008 the work received its US premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Other recent conducting engagements include an appearance at the the 2008 BBC Proms, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and soloists Sir John Tomlinson and Louis Lortie, and a production of The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Opera House in London.

Engagements in 2008/9 include a return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with which he has developed a particularly close relationship; the Dutch premiere of In Seven Days with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic; his debut with the New World Symphony; a Wigmore Hall recital with cellist Steven Isserlis, and a series of recitals in the UK and US with violinist Anthony Marwood.

Thomas Adès is a renowned interpreter of a range of other composers’ music, and his performances and recordings of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Nancarrow, Kurtág, Ruders and Barry have been critically acclaimed. The many orchestras he has conducted include the Baltimore Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, London Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the BBC, Finnish and Danish Radio Symphony Orchestras, and ensembles including Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (whose Music Director he was between 1998 and 2000), the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern and the Athelas Ensemble.

A number of international festivals have chosen to present special focuses on his music. Among these were Helsinki’s Musica Nova (1999), Salzburg Easter Festival (2004), Radio France’s Festival Présences (2007) and the Barbican’s ‘Traced Overhead’ (2007).

Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano and composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and read music at King’s College, Cambridge. Between 1993 and 1995 he was Composer in Association with the Hallé Orchestra, which resulted in The Origin of the Harp (1994) and These Premises Are Alarmed for the opening of the Bridgewater Hall in 1996. Asyla (1997) was a Feeney Trust commission for Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO, who toured it together and performed it at Symphony Hall in August 1998 in Rattle’s last concert as Music Director. Rattle subsequently programmed Asyla in his opening concert as Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic in September 2002.

Adès’ first opera, Powder Her Face (commissioned by Almeida Opera for the Cheltenham Festival in 1995), has been performed all round the world, was televised by Channel Four, and is available on a DVD as well as an EMI CD. Most of the composer’s music has been recorded by EMI, with whom Adès has a contract as composer, pianist and conductor. Adès’ second opera, The Tempest, was commissioned by the Royal Opera House and was premiered under the baton of the composer to great critical acclaim in February 2004. It was revived at Covent Garden in 2007 – again with the composer conducting, and to a sold-out house - and has also been performed in Copenhagen, Strasbourg and Santa Fe. In September 2005 his violin concerto, Concentric Paths, written for Anthony Marwood, was premiered at the Berliner Festspiele and the BBC Proms, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under his baton. His second orchestral work for Simon Rattle, Tevot, (2007) was commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Carnegie Hall.

Adès’ music has attracted numerous awards and prizes, including the prestigious Grawemeyer Award (in 2000, for Asyla), of which he is the youngest ever recipient. From 1999-2008 he was Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival.