Thomas Adès (b. 1971)

Started by bhodges, November 16, 2007, 08:03:49 AM

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EigenUser

Quote from: amw on June 07, 2014, 03:41:17 AM
I always feel there's a certain kinship with the end of Ligeti's Piano Concerto and its high woodblock: an "ok, we're done here" gesture.

In general Ligeti is a massive influence on Adès, so I imagine you'd like most of his music. Another composer strongly influenced by Ligeti you could try is his former student Unsuk Chin (eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCXGRwtnDYM)
That's exactly what I thought of, too!

Yes, Ades reminds me a lot of Ligeti in compositional style, yet the result is much more urban-sounding. You can definitely tell that Ades is closer to our generation. That being said, Ligeti thought highly of some popular music as well (much to the chagrin of his fellow composers, who sneered at such music ::)). I've heard of Chin before and I've heard her "Akrostichon-Wortspiel". Interesting, though not my taste. That being said, I don't care much for songs in general so it wasn't at all a fair judgement.
Beethoven's Op. 133 -- A fugue so bad that even Beethoven himself called it "Grosse".

chadfeldheimer

Lately I also considered purchasing the Asyla recording from Rattle and Co., having read raving reviews from Alex Ross and others. But somehow this Ecstasio movement putts me off. I don't think it's able to recreate the power and atmosphere of good dance music. Also imo it does not fit into the rest of the piece.

EigenUser

Quote from: chadfeldheimer on September 14, 2014, 06:27:11 AM
Lately I also considered purchasing the Asyla recording from Rattle and Co., having read raving reviews from Alex Ross and others. But somehow this Ecstasio movement putts me off. I don't think it's able to recreate the power and atmosphere of good dance music. Also imo it does not fit into the rest of the piece.
Rave reviews, indeed! :D

Awww, I love that movement! The more I think of it, though, I think the first movement is my favorite. It certainly alludes to the third, but it has a more atmospheric feel. It is like the musical and non-musical sounds of a city on a Friday night. The way that Ades isolates all of the "weird" percussion instruments (i.e. water-gong, timpani-shells, tuned cowbells, quarter-tone-low piano) at the very opening is a great idea because it makes it easier to know what is going on later on when they "mix" with the rest of the orchestra.

It seems that the third movement is more of a process toward dance music as opposed to dance music. It builds up until the high-hat section, stops, builds up, then goes full-force with the bass drum and timpani!
Beethoven's Op. 133 -- A fugue so bad that even Beethoven himself called it "Grosse".

chadfeldheimer

Quote from: EigenUser on September 14, 2014, 04:32:30 PM
Rave reviews, indeed! :D
Oh - did not recognize it's fitting that well.  ;D
Quote from: EigenUser on September 14, 2014, 04:32:30 PM

Awww, I love that movement! The more I think of it, though, I think the first movement is my favorite. It certainly alludes to the third, but it has a more atmospheric feel. It is like the musical and non-musical sounds of a city on a Friday night. The way that Ades isolates all of the "weird" percussion instruments (i.e. water-gong, timpani-shells, tuned cowbells, quarter-tone-low piano) at the very opening is a great idea because it makes it easier to know what is going on later on when they "mix" with the rest of the orchestra.

It seems that the third movement is more of a process toward dance music as opposed to dance music. It builds up until the high-hat section, stops, builds up, then goes full-force with the bass drum and timpani!
Ok - thanks. Perhaps I should give it another try, if only to get to know more of an composer of the younger generation.

vandermolen

Heard my first work by this composer on the radio yesterday - a movement from 'Asyla' which I found very impressive - modernistic but approachable. I found the CD second hand for 0.19p on Amazon and look forward to receiving it. This thread appears to have been dormant for some time so maybe worth a revival.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

relm1

Quote from: vandermolen on July 29, 2018, 01:43:52 AM
Heard my first work by this composer on the radio yesterday - a movement from 'Asyla' which I found very impressive - modernistic but approachable. I found the CD second hand for 0.19p on Amazon and look forward to receiving it. This thread appears to have been dormant for some time so maybe worth a revival.

Asyla is fantastic as is this composer.  Very accessible but imaginative and distinctive.  I love his operas too.

vandermolen

Quote from: relm1 on July 29, 2018, 06:13:38 AM
Asyla is fantastic as is this composer.  Very accessible but imaginative and distinctive.  I love his operas too.
Great to hear - thanks  :)
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Cato

Here is a performance on YouTube: skip to 8:50 or so for the start of the music.

https://www.youtube.com/v/28v6oBv37K0
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

kyjo

I think the only work by Adès I've heard is "Tevot", which I found quite compelling and original, yet approachable. Must seek out more of his music.
"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music" - Sergei Rachmaninoff

CRCulver

#69
The DVD release of Simon Rattle's inaugural concert with the Berlin Philharmonic is mainly Mahler's Fifth, but Ades' Asyla is performed as the opener. If you like Asyla, then I recommend seeing this video of the performance, you will be able to see what unusual percussion sources and instrumental techniques Ades wrote into the piece.

vandermolen

Thanks for all the replies today - read with much interest.
:)
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

relm1

I wish Marin Alsop's performance with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra of Asyla was available because it was so much more superior to the tame version from Simon Rattle.  Unfortunately it is not (or at least I haven't found it).  Her version was searing whereas Rattles was tame.  She was also very much observant of the dynamics and tempo which I can objectively say Rattle was not having followed the score.  The music is still brilliant but the experience of hearing it live is not to be missed. 

relm1

#72
Thomas Ades' Inferno (2019) was premiered a few months ago and is the first half of an evening length ballet based on Dante's Inferno.  I really enjoyed this music and found it riveting, lyrical, and very accessible.  Anyone who enjoys the ballets of Prokofiev or Shostakovich will enjoy this.  So far, its only 45 minutes long so I imagine when finished it will be 90 minutes or so.

From the LA Times review of the premiere:
When Thomas Adès refers to "Inferno," his new orchestral work for ballet, as a showstopper, it's not hyperbole.
At its concert premiere via the L.A. Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in May, the work elicited huge, spontaneous applause following its penultimate section. The piece wasn't over, but those in the audience couldn't help themselves. A few even jumped to their feet.

"I take no credit for it, because Gustavo [Dudamel] is brilliant," the 48-year-old British composer says, suggesting that it was the Phil's performance as much as his score to which the audience responded. "But to have a showstopper, that is very exciting. ... And this was a showstopper with a standing ovation attached, which was something I've never seen before. I'm absolutely not boasting, but I'm quite excited to see what happens when we throw 33 dancers into that as well."

Adès had always wanted to tackle Dante's "Divine Comedy" musically, and this seemed the perfect project for it. On the opera stage, the composer has already reinterpreted a Shakespeare play ("The Tempest") and a classic film by Luis Buñuel ("The Exterminating Angel"), but Dante's epic tale was never going to work as an opera, he says.
"But it being a dance, of course, sets one in a way free from certain of the local details of the piece. All the different characters, which are complete when you're reading it, you can't dance or sing every single one of them," the composer says.

To solve this problem, Adès created his own scenario for the work, distilling Dante's many characters into what he calls essential archetypes: "Like in the 'Nutcracker Suite,' you have the coffee and the chocolates and the Sugar Plum Fairy. In my ballet, you have the selfish and the deviants and the suicidal."

A sizzling, crackling whip of a piece, Adès' "Inferno" is a 45-minute, continuously performed (except in the case of a spontaneous standing ovation) series of 13 movements or scenes.

"It's really kind of a thumbnail map of the journey through 'Inferno,'" Adès says. "I mean, we had to leave an awful lot out, but it is all in there in one form or another if you dig a bit."
It is also just the beginning. Adès is currently working on 45 additional minutes of music based on Dante's "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso." In 2020, he, Dean and McGregor will present all three sections as an evening-length work at the Royal Opera House in London.
But before audiences can ascend into heaven with this creative team, they must first spend time in hell, a delicious, riotous place to be in this case.

"We're not going to have little people dressed in red with pitchforks jumping 'round," the composer says, describing the way in which he connects with Dean's black-and-white design.
The composer says he is drawn to Dean's use of "old" mediums like drawing, photography and film. It reminds him of the way in which he drew on classic source material while composing "Inferno" — in his case, the music of Franz Liszt, who himself wrote a piano sonata and a symphony inspired by the "Divine Comedy."

"I quite often collaborate with the dead," Adès says. "And Liszt really owns hell and the demoniacal. I looked at what he'd done, and those sounds that arose in him were still completely live cultures. I could put them in passages and new things would happen. So the music in 'Inferno' moves from absolutely 100% me, to 100% Liszt and every gradation in between. I wanted to have this strange feeling that you were almost falling down into the past."

The composer identifies the same kind of looking back in Dean's design. It's an example, he says, of McGregor's genius in choreographing an artistic collaboration that feels natural and organic.
"I didn't know Tacita before," he says. "But I love her works. When this all comes together at the Music Center, it's going to be a thriller."

relm1

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 27, 2020, 05:19:38 PM
Cross-posted from the 'Purchases' thread -

Adès isn't a new composer to me as I have four recordings of his music prior to buying the above recordings. I think, like many, the first work I heard from him was Asyla. I find him to be fascinating and his musical language is rather schizophrenic in that you never quite know what direction his music will take and, yet, when you hear a piece and it arrives so to speak, it makes complete sense. One work I'm really interested in hearing is Powder Her Face, which is a zany, but vulgar opera about or loosely inspired by a scandal involving Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll in 1960. He's another one of these British composers who has this theatrical quality in his music like Britten or Walton. Looking forward exploring more of his music.

I agree with you.   His music is also best experienced live.  I have never heard a recording of Asyla that compares to the live performances I heard where you feel the visceral impact of the music.  The same with his Piano Concerto.  Perhaps this points to his skill as a theatrical composer.  His operas and ballets are fantastic. 

Mirror Image

I cancelled my Adès order. I'm just not feeling this composer's music. I thought I would enjoy it more now that much time has elapsed, but this is sadly not the case.

brewski

For WRTI, the public radio station affiliated with Temple University, I wrote an article about Dante, the ballet by Adès, which was performed by Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic and recently released on Nonesuch.

Short version: a lot to savor in the score, and the performance alone shows the Dudamel/LA chemistry at its best.

-Bruce
"I set down a beautiful chord on paper—and suddenly it rusts."
—Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

relm1

Quote from: brewski on May 23, 2023, 03:22:00 AMFor WRTI, the public radio station affiliated with Temple University, I wrote an article about Dante, the ballet by Adès, which was performed by Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic and recently released on Nonesuch.

Short version: a lot to savor in the score, and the performance alone shows the Dudamel/LA chemistry at its best.

-Bruce

Agreed.  I was at the premiere and own the subsequent recording.  The premiere was fabulous and extremely well performed but the recording is even better!