Mitglieder des Gewandhausorchesters, Thomas Adès & Katalin Károlyi

Gewandhausorchester, Thomas Adès Dirigent

Gewandhausorchester, Thomas Adès Dirigent

Thomas Adès conducts Debussy, Adès & Simpson

Vienna Philharmonic / Igor Levit / Thomas Adès

The Vienna Philharmonic, pianist Igor Levit and conductor Thomas Adès: each of these names alone promises world class artistry. What kind of concert will be the outcome when the three performers join forces? The Austrian Standard wrote of the orchestra’s last concert with Levit that »they were not only on the same wavelength, they were literally surfing on a wave of energy«. For the Hamburg International Music Festival, they have put together a programme full of (positive!) surprises that is well off the beaten track. The classical prelude is a symphony by Joseph Haydn, followed by Thomas Adès’ piano concerto, which has already been performed around 60 times since its premiere in 2019 – a remarkable amount for a contemporary work. Given the fame that the multi-talented British composer enjoys, this success is hardly surprising. A New York Times critic wrote about the premiere of the concerto: »As ever, the craft is astounding, the orchestration ceaselessly brilliant. The voice is wholly his own — dissonant, offbeat, whiplash, wry — even as it whispers to musics past. This breathless concerto comes across as zesty and accessible. But don’t be fooled. Just below the surface, the music sizzles. I can’t wait to hear it again.« Adès, whose music is full of musical echoes from baroque to jazz yet refuses to follow any dogmas, sets the tone for the second half of the concert featuring Leoš Janácek, whose musical language around a century ago was equally undogmatic. His rhapsody »Taras Bulba« sets Nikolai Gogol’s tragic tale of the same name about a father and his two sons to music. So vividly that a film inevitably unfolds in the mind’s eye of the listener. By way of a prelude, two miniatures pay tribute to Pierre Boulez as the spotlighted composer of the International Music Festival.

Cancelled: Watch This Space | Thomas Adès & friends

Klaus Mäkelä Johann Sebastian Bach Thomas Adès Johannes Brahms

During his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was legendary as an organist and as a cantor in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. From 1729, he also led the city’s Collegium Musicum, an ensemble that played every Friday at Café Zimmermann, Leipzig’s most famous coffee house.It might have been at such a Friday concert that Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 was played for the first time. Such suites, with small pieces based on various dance forms, were incredibly popular at the time. Bach wrote four orchestral suites, and the famous Air is one of the five movements in the third suite.The British composer Thomas Adès (b. 1971) got his breakthrough during the 1990s, and has since been one of the most performed and recognized orchestral composers of our time. The orchestral work Asyla was premiered in 1997 and is one of his most performed works. Asyla is the plural of asylum. The word means sanctuary or safe place, and psychiatric hospitals were called asylums for a long time. The composer plays with the double meaning in this diverse and nuanced work with four movements. The third movement, Ecstasio, describes a rave party in 1990s London.In 1880, Johann Brahms (1833-1897) discussed Johann Sebastian Bach’s music with some friends. He sat down by the piano and played a chaconne by Bach. While playing, he asked them: “How would you like to one day listen to a symphony movement written over this theme?”Bach was one of Brahm’s great idols, and the theme is from his Cantata No. 150, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich. When Brahms began the work on his Symphony No. 4 in 1884, he took up the theme again and used it as the foundation for his last and perhaps most impressive symphonic movement.

Thomas Quasthoff Quartet

When Thomas Quasthoff brings his new programme »For You« to life, he is above all one thing – absolutely authentic. Quasthoff has a sure sense for the most suitable style of what he sings. This applies to opera arias, art and folk songs as well as jazz, pop and soul. He has long since proven that, as a classical singer with an enormously versatile bass-baritone, he can also master genres rooted in the African-American musical tradition. And so what one so appreciates about Quasthoff as a recital singer also becomes a golden rule for everything else. How the bass-baritone lives up to his claim of really touching people with his voice is made clear by the enthusiastic audience reactions and the praises of the press. He is joined by three excellent jazz musicians: Dieter Ilg is characterised by his electrifying vitality, intelligent curiosity, technical brilliance and total devotion to the moment. Wolfgang Haffner is Germany’s best-known drummer – with an unparalleled career that extends far beyond jazz. Simon Oslender is the youngest member of the band – once entering the scene as a »prodigy on the Hammond organ«, the now 24-year-old is considered one of the »rising stars« of the German music scene on piano, organ and keyboards.

Thomas Quasthoff Quartet

For five decades, he has set standards on international stages and moved reached and moved countless people with his art. In the course of his career he has performed with all the leading orchestras and has appeared on all the major concert stages and at major festivals as a lieder and concert singer. A close collaboration with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, Helmuth Rilling, Christian Thielemann and Franz Welser-Möst. Thomas Quasthoff has been »Artist in Residence« at the Vienna Musikverein, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, at Carnegie Hall, at the Lucerne Festival and in Baden-Baden, Hamburg, London’s Wigmore Hall and the Barbican Centre. He received numerous national and international honours, such as the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Three of his recordings have received Grammy and six have been honoured with the Echo Award. When Thomas Quasthoff brings his new programme »For You« to life, he is above all one thing – absolutely authentic. Quasthoff has a sure sense for the most suitable style of what he sings. This applies to opera arias, art and folk songs as well as jazz, pop and soul. He has long since proven that, as a classical singer with an enormously versatile bass-baritone, he can also master genres rooted in the African-American musical tradition. And so what one so appreciates about Quasthoff as a recital singer also becomes a golden rule for everything else. How the bass-baritone lives up to his claim of really touching people with his voice is made clear by the enthusiastic audience reactions and the praises of the press. He is joined by three excellent jazz musicians: Dieter Ilg is characterised by his electrifying vitality, intelligent curiosity, technical brilliance and total devotion to the moment. Wolfgang Haffner is Germany’s best-known drummer – with an unparalleled career that extends far beyond jazz. Simon Oslender is the youngest member of the band – once entering the scene as a »prodigy on the Hammond organ«, the now 24-year-old is considered one of the »rising stars« of the German music scene on piano, organ and keyboards.

Thomas Borchert & Navina Heyne

What would James Bond be without the great theme songs that we look forward to every time a new film from the most famous film series of all time is released? We not only associate them with great cinema, but also with the musical spirit of the time in which they were written. From the »swinging sixties« to the 2020s, Bond songs have always been a part of musical history.

THOMAS HAMPSON & WOLFRAM RIEGER

“No other composer has had a more profound influence on me and taught me more than Gustav Mahler,” says Thomas Hampson. Having won universal acclaim for his performances of Mahler’s songs, the baritone has also immersed himself in the composer’s life more thoroughly than almost any other singer. Joined by his longtime piano partner Wolfram Rieger, he takes the audience on a musical journey to Mahler’s eventful times that also includes works by his contemporaries Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Zemlinsky, Anton Webern, and Richard Strauss, as well as his personal companion and wife Alma Mahler.