CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Making Music: Thomas Adès

Zankel Hall
Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Thomas Adès, Conductor and Pianist
Valdine Anderson, Soprano
Ara Guzelimian, Series Moderator

THOMAS ADÈS Five Eliot Landscapes
THOMAS ADÈS Chamber Symphony, Op. 2
THOMAS ADÈS Court Studies from The Tempest
THOMAS ADÈS Living Toys

Program Notes:

By Paul Griffiths

THOMAS ADÈS
Born March 1, 1971, in London.

Five Eliot Landscapes

Composed in 1990, Five Eliot Landscapes received its world premiere on July 23, 1994, in London with Valdine Anderson and the composer. Tonight marks the work’s Carnegie Hall premiere.

Success in the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year competition in 1989 could have been for Adès the beginning of a career as a concert pianist. Instead, he seems to have felt confirmed in his urge to compose. He had already been studying composition under Robert Saxton in the junior department of the Guildhall School in London, and he continued such studies when he went to Cambridge in the fall of 1989, now with Alexander Goehr among his mentors. During his first vacation from Cambridge, Adès was determined to make a true start as a composer—to write his Op. 1. In doing so, he turned to the poetry of T. S. Eliot, as he had a few years before in basing his first compositional effort, for piano, on The Waste Land.

Eliot’s Landscapes—a set he published under this title and in this order—are about places he knew in both the US and Britain; Cape Ann, north of Boston, is the site of the Dry Salvages, pondered upon in the third of the Eliot’s Four Quartets. As in that larger and later work, the personal reminiscence or musing prompted by each landscape is refracted through a prism of art, and so it is in the remarkable settings heard tonight, which Adès wrote during the first 11 days of 1990. Relatively simple vocal images, though by no means easy to sing, are encased in piano textures that ramify them. In the first song, for example, the singer’s steady exploration of intervals (a phrase in semitones, a whole-tone phrase, a phrase in minor thirds) and her dactylic rhythms provide the elements for the piano’s counterpoint. At the same time, the connection is illustrative: the pianist’s right hand—starting out high, trickling, edgy—seems to be picking out echoes of the children’s voices the soprano remembers. Here, in the far treble, the composer at 18 was staking out his own territory, fusing the poetic with the intricate.

Chamber Symphony, Op. 2

Composed in 1990, Chamber Symphony received its world premiere on February 24, 1991, in Cambridge with the Contemporary Music Festival Ensemble conducted by the composer. Tonight marks the work’s Carnegie Hall premiere.

Having made a start with his Eliot songs, Adès had by the end of the same year completed this work for 15-piece ensemble: a chamber symphony that goes through four movements, fast—slow—faster—slow, in an unbroken span. By his own account, Adès began with the idea of a concerto for basset clarinet, the bass-extended instrument for which Mozart wrote a concerto, quintet, and other music. As Adès started composing, however, “the accompanying chamber ensemble became infected with the personality of the solo instrument, until the whole group represented in my mind a super-basset-clarinet with strings and a constant rhythm section.”

The rhythm section gets the music going, in a “queasy but strict tango rhythm,” breeding a kind of sonata movement, whose first subject grows from the up-down half-step motif that comes in over the rhythm on viola and alto flute. Just as the piece seems to be developing into a concerto for jazz basset clarinet, it changes texture and tone for the second subject, with string harmonics, nervy chords on the piano (entering for the first time), and a “Three Blind Mice” figure on the brass.

From here, the music starts gaining in intensity, with both subjects overlaid, until the tango suddenly winds down to “a cavernous tread,” over which the trombone meditates before the basset clarinet is restored to its pre-eminence. The temperature rises steadily, and the up-down motif comes back high in the woodwind. Another new instrument at this late stage, the accordion, carries the music towards a dance-scherzo, which again rapidly shoots up in excitement until it explodes. The accordion then serves to make a transition to the finale, “a serene overview of the preceding music, as if from a great height.”

It was this piece that gained Adès his first professional performance, when the BBC Philharmonic played the score under Matthias Bamert in 1993. The event sparked a number of commissions and invitations for the composer still in his early 20s—including the commission that led to Living Toys.

Court Studies from The Tempest
Composed in 2005, Court Studies received its world premiere on June 16, 2005, in Aldeburgh with the Composers Ensemble. Tonight marks the work’s Carnegie Hall premiere.


Written the year after the first performance of Adès’s operatic treatment of The Tempest, this continuous movement is scored for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano—the grouping for which the composer had written his first chamber piece, Catch, in 1991. The piece scans the leading figures who arrive on Prospero’s island: the usurper Antonio, the young prince Ferdinand, the latter’s father, the King of Naples, and the honest old counsellor Gonzalo. Here they are, compressed into designs as crisp and stylized as on a hand of court cards. Antonio is figured first in a slippery dance, then in a sneaking one. Ferdinand’s music is alternately assertive and sweet, the King’s a drooping shadow play between two lines. A shock fanfare introduces them, intervenes again before Gonzalo’s amiable portrait, and, greatly decelerated, provides the material for the quasi-passacaglia with which the work ends.

Living Toys

Composed in 1993, Living Toys received its world premiere on February 11, 1994, in London with the London Sinfonietta conducted by Oliver Knussen. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Zankel Hall on September 12, 2003, with the Zankel Band conducted by John Adams at the Zankel Hall Opening Festival.

This second single-movement chamber symphony, commissioned in the wake of the first, has quite a story behind it. Adès prefaces the score with what purports to be a Spanish anecdote:
“When the men asked him what he wanted to be, the child did not name any of their own occupations, as they had all hoped he would, but replied: ‘I am going to be a hero, and dance with angels and bulls, and fight with bulls and soldiers, and die a hero in outer space, and be buried a hero.’ Seeing him standing there, the man felt small, understanding that they were not heroes, and that their lives were less substantial than the dreams which surrounded the childlike toys.”

The piece heard tonight is a journey through these dreams—of dancing with angels (to a horn solo that often moves up and down through harmonic spectra within an orchestral echo chamber); fighting an aurochs, or extinct European bison (to brilliant flourishes from a piccolo trumpet crossed with bovine bellows); encountering an army (with more from piccolo trumpet, plus snare drum); observing the demise of H. A. L., the spaceship computer from the film 2001 (music that moves very slowly both up and down from an initial lofty image of infinite space); and playing funerals (largely in the bass). These five dreams are interweaved with three others, whose anagrammatical titles hint at underlying musical connections. But then, all eight sections are full of cross-references: motifs, instrumental characters, and harmonies—especially such as can be derived from harmonic spectra. These are the toys, made of weightless sound, and their lives—and deaths—make up the piece.


—Paul Griffiths

Paul Griffiths is the author of numerous books on music, including The New Penguin Dictionary of Music and, most recently, A Concise History of Western Music (Cambridge University Press).

Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) has a long-standing relationship with its former music director Thomas Adès, performing and recording his ensemble works, premiering his Sonata da Caccia and Concerto Conciso, and touring his opera Powder Her Face and recording it for the UK’s Channel 4 TV. In 2007, the ensemble took part in major festivals of Adès’s music in London and Paris; in 2006, Adès conducted BCMG in Cologne, Germany in works by Stravinsky. Adès and BCMG have frequently championed the music of Gerald Barry, including performances of his opera The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit on tour in the UK, France, and Germany, and, most recently, premiered his new work, Beethoven, in Birmingham two weeks ago.

BCMG was formed in 1987 by players from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and is established as one of Europe’s leading ensembles. Sir Simon Rattle is the Group’s founding patron and has conducted BCMG in the UK, both on tour and on disc. BCMG has two Artists-in-Association, composer John Woolrich and composer-conductor Oliver Knussen, whose BBC Prom in London with the Group in August 2007 was recently nominated for an ITV South Bank Show award. Other recent awards include an international MIDEM recording award in January 2008 for the Group’s CD of Benjamin Britten’s complete film music.

BCMG promotes a season of concerts in its home, the CBSO Center in Birmingham, and tours widely in the UK, including annual appearances at the Aldeburgh Festival and London’s Barbican Center. The Group’s extensive international touring has included a major European tour in 2000 with Sir Simon Rattle and a tour of India with composer Judith Weir for the British Council in 2002. BCMG has pioneered many initiatives to bring new audiences to contemporary classical music, including its Sound Investment commissioning scheme, which gives individuals the chance to invest in new works and involves them in the commissioning process; and free touring performances in rural England and urban Birmingham.

BCMG is passionate about involving young people and the wider community in the performance and creation of new music. Recent learning projects include pioneering Family and Schools Concerts, which explore new ways of presenting contemporary music to young listeners, combining music with film and theater; and Resonance, a performance and commissioning project, which took the science of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy as inspiration for a series of new string quartets for young performers. BCMG also runs regular out-of-school composing and improvisation workshops: Music Maze, Zigzag Ensemble, and Feel the Buzz, for young people ages 8 through 18 who like to create their own music.

For more information, please visit bcmg.org.uk.

Founding Patron Sir Simon Rattle
Artist-in-Association Oliver Knussen
Artist-in-Association John Woolrich

Artistic Director Stephen Newbould
Chair Stephen Saltaire
Financial Director Simon Purkess

General Manager Jackie Newbould
Administrator Deronie Cox
Development Manager Gwendolyn Tietze
Education Manager Nancy Evans
Education Trainee Eileen Barnett
Marketing Manager Maria Howes

Press Consultant Faith Wilson
Marketing Consultant Paula Whitehouse
Orchestra Manager Mark Phillips
Platform Manager Peter Harris
Projects Manager Jenna Kumiega
Projects Assistants James Carpenter, Christopher Calvert

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group:

Marie-Christine Zupancic, Flutes and Piccolo
Melinda Maxwell, Oboe, Cor Anglais, and Sopranino Recorder
Christopher Richards, Clarinet, Basset, and Bass Clarinet
Mark O’Brien, Bass Clarinet
Margaret Cookhorn, Bassoon and Contrabassoon
Mark Phillips, Horn
Jonathan Holland, Trumpet
Robert Farley, Trumpet
Anthony Howe, Trombone
Julian Warburton, Percussion
Adrian Spillett, Percussion
Malcolm Wilson, Piano and Accordion
Alexandra Wood, Violin
Marcus Barcham-Stevens, Violin
Christopher Yates, Viola
Ulrich Heinen, Cello
John Tattersdill, Double Bass

Thomas Adès, Conductor and Pianist
As composer, conductor, and pianist, Thomas Adès and his music are presented throughout the world, and acclaim from all corners has made him a major presence on the music scene today.

For the 2007–08 season, Mr. Adès holds The Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair by Carnegie Hall, where he is featured in performances throughout the season, including a solo piano recital, a performance of his Piano Quintet with the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, the US premiere of his piece Tevót given by the Berliner Philharmoniker with Sir Simon Rattle, and the New York premiere of Gerald Barry’s The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit, with Mr. Adès conducting the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. He also makes appearances in the US conducting the Baltimore Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group. Elsewhere, Mr. Adès performs at the Lufthansa Jewel of Russia Festival in St. Petersburg, conducting his own work Asyla, along with performances of three of his major works by the orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater; with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducting Asyla and his Violin Concerto; and at the Royal Opera House, conducting Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.

Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music & 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 commissioned for Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Rattle subsequently programmed Asyla in his opening concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker as Music Director in September 2002. His second orchestral work for Simon Rattle, Tevót (2007), was commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Adès’s first opera, Powder Her Face, has been performed worldwide and was televised by Channel Four in the UK. Mr. Adès’s second opera, The Tempest, was commissioned by London’s Royal Opera House and premiered under the baton of the composer to great critical acclaim in February 2004. In September 2005, his Violin Concerto for Anthony Marwood was premiered at the Berliner Festspiele and the BBC Proms, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under the composer’s baton.

Valdine Anderson, Soprano
Canadian soprano Valdine Anderson made her European operatic debut as the Maid in the premiere of Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face at the Cheltenham Festival. Anderson made her English National Opera debut in Gavin Bryar’s Dr Ox’s Experiment, and has appeared in performances of Elliott Carter’s What Next? at the Concertgebouw and Queen Elizabeth Hall. Concert appearances include Boulez’s Pli selon pli with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival, a US tour of Dutilleux Correspondences with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle, and her BBC Proms debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Mark Elder.

Anderson has performed with BCMG, CBSO, London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble, Chicago Chamber Musicians, Deutsche Symphonie Orchester among others and given recitals at Calgary Opera and Wigmore Hall. She has performed Powder Her Face with the London Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, where she returns for further performances in 2008. Anderson’s future engagements include concerts with the Orchestre de Paris with Pierre Boulez, Netherlands Radio Orchestra, and the Schoenberg Ensemble. Her many recordings include Maxwell-Davies’s Job, Carter’s What Next?, and Adès’s Five Eliot Landscapes and Powder Her Face.

Ara Guzelimian, Series Moderator
Ara Guzelimian was appointed Provost and Dean of The Juilliard School in New York City in August 2006. In that capacity, he oversees the faculty, curriculum, and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions—dance, drama, and music.

Prior to his Juilliard appointment, Ara Guzelimian was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. He continues his association with Carnegie Hall as host and producer of the acclaimed Making Music composer series, which has included concerts devoted to such composers as John Adams, Hans Werner Henze, Peter Lieberson, Leon Kirchner, and Osvaldo Golijov, as well as Oliver Knussen, Meredith Monk, George Perle, and Chen Yi. This season, Pierre Boulez, Thomas Adès, and Frederic Rzewski are the featured composers.

Previously, Ara Guzelimian was the Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado from 1993 to 1998. In addition, he was Artistic Director of the Ojai Festival in California from 1992 to 1997. He was associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1978 to 1993, first as producer for the Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, more recently, as Artistic Administrator. Mr. Guzelimian is also an active lecturer, writer, and music critic. In the recent seasons, he has been heard both on the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts and as a guest host on public radio’s Saint Paul Sunday. He is the editor of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (Pantheon Books, 2002), a collection of dialogues between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. In September 2003, Mr. Guzelimian was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.