Thomas Adès conducts Stravinsky

Kirill Gerstein plays Adès’s Piano Concerto and Liszt

Thomas Adès dirigeert zijn eigen werk 'These Premises are not alarmed' en Les fresques de 'Piera della Francesca' van Bohuslav Martinu. image: Renske Vrolijk/Concertgebouworkest

Thomas Adès is conducting a programme brimming with seductive music and breakneck virtuosity with a starring role for Kirill Gerstein and music by Krausas, Liszt, Stravinsky and Adès himself.

A crazy ride full of unexpected turns, composed with Kirill Gerstein’s incredible virtuosity in mind

Concert programme

  • Veronika Krausas

    Caryatids (Dutch premiere)

  • Thomas Adès

    Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Dutch premiere)

  • -- interval --

  • Franz Liszt

    Totentanz for piano and orchestra

  • Igor Stravinsky

    Symphony in three movements

Performers

About this concert

In his colourful music, the English composer–conductor Thomas Adès intertwines sounds from the past and present in a virtuoso manner. Adès gave a particularly strong first performance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra as a conductor in 2011, followed by collaborations in 2016 and 2019. Now he returns for the Dutch premiere of his own Piano Concerto, a crazy ride full of unexpected turns, composed with Kirill Gerstein’s incredible virtuosity in mind. The soloist is also performing a special version of Liszt’s Totentanz, extended with material by Liszt himself. 

Thomas Adès opens the concert with Veronika Krausas’s baroque Caryatids and concludes with the Symphony in Three Movements from 1945, in which Stravinsky, who had emigrated to America, incorporates various ideas for failed film music projects. The turbulent symphony is a reflection on the Second World War inspired by television and documentary footage – soldiers marching, people ensuring the enemy would not be able to cross their fields, the allied advance… ‘Each episode in the Symphony is linked in my imagination with a specific cinematographic impression of the war.’

Dates and tickets

About this concert

In his colourful music, the English composer–conductor Thomas Adès intertwines sounds from the past and present in a virtuoso manner. Adès gave a particularly strong first performance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra as a conductor in 2011, followed by collaborations in 2016 and 2019. Now he returns for the Dutch premiere of his own Piano Concerto, a crazy ride full of unexpected turns, composed with Kirill Gerstein’s incredible virtuosity in mind. The soloist is also performing a special version of Liszt’s Totentanz, extended with material by Liszt himself. 

Thomas Adès opens the concert with Veronika Krausas’s baroque Caryatids and concludes with the Symphony in Three Movements from 1945, in which Stravinsky, who had emigrated to America, incorporates various ideas for failed film music projects. The turbulent symphony is a reflection on the Second World War inspired by television and documentary footage – soldiers marching, people ensuring the enemy would not be able to cross their fields, the allied advance… ‘Each episode in the Symphony is linked in my imagination with a specific cinematographic impression of the war.’

A preview