An English composer makes his Vienna Philharmonic debut
NewsThe composer Thomas Adès will break new ground this weekend when he conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in a subscription concert.
Who was the last British composer to earn that honour? Was there ever one.
Adès had experience of the orchestra when conducting his Shakesperean opera The Tempest at the Vienna State Opera in 2015. He says: ‘I admired the sound that the orchestra got out of my music, an understanding of my tonal language was immediately noticeable. Not only were the notes played back exactly. You heard the meaning of the phrases, understood what they were saying…. Because of this understanding, the musicians also asked very good questions.’
This weekend’s programme is Berg, Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6; Ravel, La Valse; Adès, Dance of death.
photo: Chris Christodoulou
Didn’t Barbirolli produce some minor compositions and also conducted the VPO?
Viennese DEI- for white people.
A European orchestra.
I feel sorry for the VPO.
It’s good for them to play something other than Strauss waltzes once in a while. Can’t live on confectionery alone.
What an ignorant comment. The VPO has its own concert series with classical works and performs at top level in the Musikverein. Only once in a while, at the Newyears Concert, the orchestra indulges in waltzes.
What an ignorant comment, John Borstlap. The VPO is an arcane, backwards-looking organization that indulges mostly in playing 100 to 200 year-old music almost exclusively. They need some fresh repertoire. You can’t only play Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler almost all of the time.
Here is Ades’ uplifting piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpFh-Z_GYfE
… to remind the Viennese that there’s more to life than joyful waltzes, polkas, Mozart and Beethoven etc., especially nowadays.
Mind the ‘tender’ duet at 32:39 in the ‘style’ of R Strauss, killing the baby. How more sadistic can you get?
What is it in the air, that inspire British composers to repeat postwar celebration of death and nihilism? It seemed that Birtwistle had finished-off the genre with his Triumph of Time, but Ades revives it in his own, much more tonal style. The message however, is the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDoEjFZsSA4
Thank you for posting this masterpiece….we still wait for your big piece………..As for the comment,can´t we have a post by Norman without you adding your two cents to it??? It gets boring and bothersome…Listen to some Karl Jenkins,and you `ll find something more uplifting,perhaps…And yes,in times of war,great composers always did write”uplifting “music,right???Holst´s The Planets,Ravel´s La Valse,Shostakovich´s 8th,Hartmann´s Concerto Funebre…..LOL.Just BTW,that´s precisely what Stalin´s cultural henchmen demanded from Shostakovich,Prokofieff,Miaskovsky et all…”Write uplifting music”!Sounds familiar….Go ahead,give us some uplifting music!We are anxious to hear it!
Yes, I know, it’s all very difficult. Keep trying! In the end there might be some light.
We don’t need the school masterly patronizing of a mediocre narrow minded would be Oswald Spengler..
The Totentanz frieze and the bombing of Lübeck demands uplifting music,we all know that…..oh boy…..
Your comment displays an astonishing lack of knowledge about the topic of Mr.Ades´moving and eloquent cantata.
The piece is about the famous “Totentanz”frieze in the Marienkirche in Lübeck.The frieze was destroyed in an air raid on March 29,1942,along with the church,and about one fifth of the historic city of Lübeck.Ades sets the texts of an anonymous author,which appeared under the pictures,to music.Only black and white photographs of the frieze have survived.
The”Totentanz”was a popular topic in the Gothic period in Christian culture all over Europe.It was basically a metaphor on death the great equalizer:Social status,age,political power….all barriers are wiped out by death,the great equalizer.Peasant or pope,soldier or monk,old man or baby,king or beggar…death catches them all,regardless of their status.If you think this nihilistic,okay…
The pictures on the frieze vividly describe the different persons,and so do the words and Mr.Ades´s music.
Ades uses the words and the lost piece of art both as a musical visualization of the frieze ,and as a memorial for the victims,the victims on the frieze,and the victims of the war…,or indeed,all wars.
As often with Ades´work ,the music takes a composer dear to his heart as some kind of inspiration.In the case of his recent Dante ballet,it is his beloved Liszt.The ballet is de facto a giant paraphrase on the supreme master of paraphrases,paraphrasing,among others,parts of the Dante Symphony and the Dante sonata,and shorter pieces ranging from the early Grand Galop Chromatique to the late,visionary La Lugubre Gondola,
The inspirational source for Totentanz is,quite obviously,Brahms(i don´t get what makes you think of Strauss.There´s absolutely no resemblance to it).
In particular the German Requiem and the Vier Ernste Gesänge.Ades felt a strong connection between the architecture of North German “Backsteingotik”(brick gothic),of which the Marienkirche Lübeck is a prime example,and Brahms´s musical language.Which makes sense.Brahms was from Northern Germany,knew and loved the particular buildings,and,growing with age,loved and promoted the organ music by north german baroque masters like Nikolaus Bruhns,Dietrich Buxtehude ,and Vincent Lübeck,who wrote for those churches and their organs(Buxtehude was organist in residence at the Marienkirche Lübeck for many years).
The end of Ades masterpiece couldn´t be more removed from being”nihilistic”.The echoes from Brahms´Requiem and the Four Serious Songs add a sense of reconcilation,redemption and peace,building an unbelievably moving and poignant coda .Rachmaninoff did something similar at the end of his masterwork The Bells,adding a similarly touching,tender,consoling coda to Edgar Allan Poe´s grim,gloomy depiction of death.
I read all of that. The result is, nonetheless, something quite different from what you seem to hear – a case of ‘intentional fallacy’.
https://www.britannica.com/art/intentional-fallacy
There is nothing ‘commemorating’ in Ades’ piece, he may have intended that, but the result is merely a morbid indulgence in postwar cynicism. This is about the MUSIC and the way he uses it to envelop the text. It has the modernist spirit, with the means of tradition. Your problem is, as I see it, taking the intended symbolism literally without hearing what the music conveys.
In trying to understand what a work of art IS, one has to get to know what the intention was, what the circumstances, any information that can throw a light on the thing, and THEN form one’s own opinion.
Adès is developing from a deplorable half-modernist with cynical gestures towards a re-interpretation of elements from the tonal traditions, which is laudable, but that trajectory is full of pitfalls. One of them is being a product of the new music establishment.
How many composers in general have conducted their own music with the VPO? This spring and summer Salonen is conducting his music with orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic, but not with his VPO appearances.
It seems hard to believe that he didn’t ask to conduct a short piece like Helix…
“Was there ever one ?” Yes Benjamin Britten (heard of him ?) conducted VPO in 1964. WarRequiem
John Williams
Paul Hindemith conducted the VPO several times ,between 1952 and 1963,both in Vienna and on tour in Japan.Some of his own music,but also a lot of other composers.
Date: 25th March 2022.
Congratulations! This is well-deserved. Please keep up the good work.
He is a genius…Fantastic,inventive composer,delivering a world class Beethoven piano recital at the same time( he gives a lot of more celebrated keyboard lions a run for their money),interesting programs..I played a program of Sibelius ;strawinsky and his own music…We were flabbergasted by his brilliance…
Oh dear!
The film composer John Williams recently recorded a disc with the Vienna Philharmonic.
Britten, for one.
when?
What a ridiculous program it is.
The Berg pieces are terrible – senseless nightmares without escape. Ades’ piece seems to be returning the favor after early musical Angst had spread all over the continent. Ravel’s La Valse – a master piece – sandwiched between celebrations of death looks like ironically being imprisoned by two composers who did his 3/4 death wish much more drastically.
What a ridiculous comment this is….write some uplifting ditties,and maybe you get a performance,for once…Otherwise there´s always a video by your countryman with the violin…Si tacuisses….
Keep trying! It’s persistence that pays-off in the end. Never give up.
The Berg pieces “are “not terrible…If you think,they are terrible,okay.But the word”are”describes a fact,not your personal opinion…You don´t define what “is”terrible,what is great and what is not….We can judge for ourselves.We don´t need a 50´s schoolmaster to determine what is art.Your personal opinion is no postulate.80 years ago,we had people,who determined what is art,what not,and which music is terrible ,or not.We live in 2022(i don´t know about you,though…)
The Berg pieces have never established themselves as normal, regular works of the repertoire, neither have Schoenberg’s Fünf Orchesterstücke, nor his 12-tone works (like the Variations). 100 years after the idea of ‘atonal music’, it has not caught-on in the central performance culture, but struck-out a path of its own, leading to sonic art after WW II. That’s OK, but with music this has nothing to do.
Things are a bit more complex than the linear music histories we find in the conventional books.
This is so utterly risible, it actually doesn´t merit any attention….”Normal,regular works of the repertoire”,” the linear structure you find in conventional books”…..err….It´s really the equivalent of a musical conspiracy theory….Schönberg and Berg are being performed all over the world…My collagues at Musikhochschule Karlsruhe were in stitches about your comments…more strange,though,…your name is completely un known in the composition faculty..nor in any other….Well,your works have not caught on in the “central performance culture”(what ever this may be…)….Sorry,this is simply a joke.You are stuck somewhere in the 1930s( musically and ideologically)….
Classical (serious) music is supposed to be ‘about’ the human condition, right. And death, destruction, angst are certainly part of it. But rubbing it in, with an entire program dedicated to The Dark, looks like a grim celebration of nihilism. What’s the point? People spending hours of rehearsel time, on hughe expenses, listeners paying for tickets to be fed with their personal perspective on the gaping mouth which awaits us all and nothing else, is a crazy ritual of sadomasochistic indulgence. It’s like presenting a painting with only black, like Malevitz’ “Black Square”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square_(painting)
…. and claiming this is all there is to human life.
Such extremes are intellectually and artistically dishonest, and in fact: diminish the works in such context. Neither forced joy, nor forced nihilism, serve the art form.
Why should readers here be permanently fed with your personal perspective????All three concerts are sold out(save for the last minute Restkarten),the two VPO members i know and talked to last week really liked the rehearsals and the program…If you don´t like it,fine,that´s your personal opinion,and you´re entitled to it.But please stop presenting your personal misgivings,dislikes and frustrations as some kind of sociological,or musical authorative truth…,with poor scholarly backing.It´s just your opinion,and the rest of the musical world doesn´t care about it.They do care about intelligent programs as the one here.believe me ,i play in first rate orchestras since 1980…You live in some cloud cuckoo land absolutely removed from reality.
I agree with that! It’s very tiring & causes digestion problems.
Sally
It´s been a huge success,both with the audience,and the orchestra,as you can hear on the radio broadcast on Ö1 from today.And the Philharmoniker were also sehr zufrieden,from what i heard…
That says a lot about the ‘human condition’ of the audience and players. Either they are going to hang themselves soon, or they don’t know what was really going-on. Of course, this can only be a minority opinion.
‘If many people agree with me, I get the feeling that I must be wrong’. (Oscar Wilde)
It says a lot about your human condition…That´s all.Does it also say anything about the human condition,that the VPO doesn´t play any of your music???The arrogance ,narcissm and ignorance of this “Herrenmenschen”attitude is just disgusting.We are not responsible for your frustrations .Leave us alone…Write some Nocturnes and spare us of your imagined superiority….There are goners,and never have beens.