Adès, Gerstein & Sibelius

Imaginative Worlds with Adès

Thomas Adès is the English composer and pianist whose playful yet technically brilliant compositions have led to comparisons with titans like Mozart and Beethoven. During his world tour, he makes a stop in Stockholm—this time as a conductor, presenting two of his own works. Joining him is the acclaimed Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein.

In interviews, Adès likens his creative process to fishing in a river—by listening inwardly to the constant flow of tones, he occasionally catches something that can be transformed into music. He draws inspiration from everything around him: visual art, literature, and especially other music, both contemporary and historical. His works encompass a wide range of influences, from early Baroque to modern club music. At the same time, he is a composer who constantly strives to avoid the expected. For Adès, only the present moment matters—repetition is comfort, and comfort is stagnation, he is said to have remarked.

Gerstein and Couperin

Adès’s 2018 piano concerto is both a full-bodied solo concerto in the grand tradition—with dramatic orchestration and pianistic fireworks—and an exploration of the concerto form itself. The pulse is fragmented, the harmonies disintegrating. Yet Adès manages to convey an overarching and coherent musical mode. A showcase of musical craftsmanship and inventiveness

Kirill Gerstein demonstrates why he is such a beloved pianist. Tackling a piano concerto written by a composer who himself masters the full range of the soloist is no small feat. But Gerstein rises to the challenge with curiosity, passion, and virtuosity. So far, he has performed the concerto no fewer than 50 times with 20 different orchestras, and now it’s the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s turn.

Adès’s thirteen-minute orchestral suite Three Studies from Couperin (2006) reveals another facet of the composer. We move from the powerful expressiveness of the piano concerto to what can be seen as a creative dialogue with history—specifically with the French Baroque master François Couperin. The work is based on three pieces from Couperin’s famous collection Pièces de Clavecin: Les Amusemens, Les Tours des Passe-passe, and L’Âme en peine, and can be described as loving reinterpretations or reflections. With a light touch, delicate and transparent, Adès captures the essence of Couperin’s quirky and timeless miniature masterpieces.

Berlioz and Sibelius

That the program opens with a youthful work by Hector Berlioz is no coincidence. Berlioz’s importance to the development of orchestral music has become increasingly recognized in modern times. The recently revived overture to the opera Les francs-juges, written as early as 1826 when Berlioz was a young student, already bears the composer’s signature traits: lush orchestral color, harmonic daring, and literary ambition. Stylistic elements that clearly resonate with Adès.

Sibelius, as confirmed by countless witnesses, was a composer who struggled both with himself and often with his works. But when inspiration struck, he seemed to tap into a kind of musical flow. His intuitively carved symphonic lines continue to win new listeners to this day. The Sixth Symphony, one of his later works, in the emblematic key of D minor, with its clarity and introspective tone, offers a perfect conclusion to a carefully curated musical experience—led by the playful Thomas Adès.

Text: Edith Söderström