Set your preferred locations for a better search. You can sign up here.

Thomas Adès conducts Debussy, Adès & Simpson

Date & Time
Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 20:00

Keywords: Symphony Concert

Artistic depiction of the event

Musicians

Thomas AdesConductor
Nicolas AltstaedtCello
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Der TagesspiegelCooperation partner

Program

“Rondes de printemps” from “Images” for orchestraClaude Debussy
“Dawn” – Chacony for orchestra at any distanceThomas Adès
“Lieux retrouvés” for violoncello and piano(Fassung für Violoncello und Orchester)Thomas Adès
“Israfel” for orchestraMark Simpson
Symphony No. 7 in C major op. 105Jean Sibelius
Give feedback
Last update: Fri, Nov 22, 2024, 12:41

Similar events

These events are similar in terms of concept, place, musicians or the program.

Artistic depiction of the event

Wiener Philharmoniker / Igor Levit / Thomas Adès

Sat, May 24, 2025, 20:00
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
Wiener Philharmoniker, Igor Levit (Piano), Thomas Adès (Conductor)
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.« 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.
Artistic depiction of the event

Klaus Mäkelä Johann Sebastian Bach Thomas Adès Johannes Brahms

Fri, Nov 29, 2024, 19:00
Klaus Mäkelä (Conductor)
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.