Thomas Adès - Asyla

My second review is also up on bachtrack.com, you can read it here. It was a night at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ with 2/3 pieces of wonderful music. I absolutely adore MacMillan and Raskatov is an incredible composer. The Terteryan piece mainly confused me though. But I hope you guys will enjoy the review and if you have any feedback, it's always welcome!

One of the concerts I'm most looking forward to these next couple of months is Thomas Adès at the Concertgebouw. He will conduct three of his own works (his violin concerto Concentric Paths (played by the incredible Leila Josefowicz), Tevot, and a new work) and also a piece by Vermeulen. Thomas Adès is one of my absolute favourite contemporary composers (I would say favourite, but there's Esa-Pekka Salonen..). This is the first piece I heard by him that started my love:


Thomas Adès - Asyla: III Ecstasio 
(performed live by the Berlin Philharmonic, cond. Simon Rattle)

Thomas Adès (1971-) is an English composer. He studied piano and composing at a whole bunch of different universities, and he was also a professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music. He's written a lot of amazing works, including two operas (Powder her Face and The Tempest) and quite a few chamber music works. My favourites are Asyla, Concentric Paths and Powder Her Face, out of the ones I've heard. Of course with him being so young, we've hopefully got another couple of decades of new music to look forward to!

Asyla is a four-movement work, somewhat like a symphony (but only 22 minutes long, so not quite). It was commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and was first performed in 1997. The movement that I posted here, the third, is definitely the most bombastic and energetic (I read somewhere that it's supposed to portray a nightclub in London), but the rest of the work is also rather beautiful. If you want to listen to the rest: Mvt 1, Mvt 2, Mvt 4. Hope you enjoy.