ThomasAdès CBE

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Conductor & Piano
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Ignatius Sokal

Ignatius Sokal

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General management with Askonas Holt, in collaboration with Angela Dixon Partner Managers: Alec Treuhaft (North America) Publisher: Faber Music

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About Thomas

Thomas Adès was born in London in 1971. His compositions include three operas: he conducted the premiere of the most recent, The Exterminating Angel, at the 2016 Salzburg Festival and subsequently at the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the Royal Opera House, London. He conducted the premiere and revival of The Tempest at the Royal Opera House, and a new production at the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna Staatsoper and in November 2022 at La Scala, Milan. He led the world premiere of his full-evening ballet The Dante Project at Covent Garden, and conducted it in May 2023 at the Opéra Garnier, Paris. He will conduct a new production of The Exterminating Angel in 2024 at the Opéra Bastille, Paris.

He frequently leads performances of his orchestral works Asyla (1997), Tevot (2007), Polaris (2010), Violin Concerto Concentric Paths (2005), In Seven Days for piano and orchestra (2008); Totentanz for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and orchestra (2013); and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2019). His compositions also include numerous celebrated chamber and solo works.

September 2023 saw Thomas Adès conduct the Gewandhausorchester as part of his two-season residency with the ensemble which sees him appear as a conductor, pianist and composer in various concert formats. This autumn Thomas also began a two-season residency with the Hallé orchestra, which sees him conduct two orchestral concerts and curate a chamber programme. For the first appearance on 28 October, Thomas conducted the UK premiere of Tower, as well as the first UK concert performance of his ballet Purgatorio, alongside his Märchentänze for violin and orchestra with Anthony Marwood, which received its UK premiere at last year’s BBC Proms.

Thomas is based in London, UK

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General management with Askonas Holt, in collaboration with Angela Dixon Partner Managers: Alec Treuhaft (North America) Publisher: Faber Music

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  • Adès, Leith, Tippet / Hallé

    Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
    Apr 2024

    • Adès prefaced Tevot with Elgar’s Sospiri, drawing almost symphonic intensity from what is at first sight just a salon piece, but then demonstrated that his own work has a power that really deserves the word symphonic. Played as magnificently as this, Tevot becomes an immense statement, whichfollows its own irrefutable musical logic while also seeming – for me at least – to conjure up echoes of late Mahler (of the 10th symphony especially); it’s undoubtedly one of Adès’s finest achievements.

    • Conducted by Thomas Adès, the Hallé Orchestra threw everything at this concert — and I don’t just mean the huge array of bells, vast and small, assembled for Oliver Leith’s new piece. That came as the climax to a stupendous first half that must have left the players gasping for their interval beverage. And they still had an intense miniature by Elgar (the tiny but tragically hued Sospiri) and Adès’s own 2007 masterpiece Tevot to come. Concerts like this renew one’s faith in the ability of British orchestras not just to survive but to flourish, startle and exhilarate even in these problematic times. Adès’s Tevot also requires a vast orchestra, especially in the jangling percussion department, but it’s a very different piece: a 20-minute epic in which a dark mass of sound seems to journey through storms of high-frequency, high-velocity clouds before reaching a point of ethereal beauty and comparative repose. The title has Hebrew biblical connotations, referencing Noah’s ark and the infant Moses’s basket; hearing it at the present time certainly made one reflect on the need for safe passages through times of turmoil.

Discography