Thomas Adès
Luxury Suite from Powder Her Face – (World premiere recording)
Five Spells from The Tempest – (World premiere recording)
Inferno Suite – (World premiere recording)
Thomas Adès
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Recorded at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 11 April 2018 and 22 February 2023.
Reviewed by: Rob Pennock
Reviewed: April 2025
CD No: London Philharmonic Orchestra CD, download and stream: LPO-0131
Duration: 69.58
Thomas Adès is arguably the world’s greatest composer, and this marvellous album features Suites from three of his stage works. He first came to real prominence when, at the start of his tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle programmed Asyla with Mahler 5. It could be argued that as the years have gone by, while the orchestration remains uniquely vivid, his style has become more melodic and he has absorbed a range of musical influences.
The earliest work, the eight movement Luxury Suite from Powder Her Face (2017), opens with a sleazy Overture, where you hear elements of West Side Story, Kurt Weill, distorted dance rhythms and fragments of works by other composers including the Neapolitan song O Santa Lucia. There is a decidedly dolorous Wedding March, a delicate Waltz, Mahlerian Paperchase and throwaway Finale.
Five Spells from the Tempest (2022) comes from the opera composed in 2003. Here the five pieces have darker hues as in the opening Overture (Storm). The initially skittish Ariel and Prospero darkens to suggest the latter, Ferdinand and Miranda is suitably romantic, The Feast features delightful writing for the harp and glockenspiel with Wagnerian brass chorales and the work ends with the beautifully tranquil Prospero’s Farwell – Caliban .
In Adès’s ballet Dante, the first part of which, Inferno, is a Lisztian description of Hell, every one of the thirteen pieces is packed full of superbly orchestrated, richly melodic portraits of the Ferryman, Hypocrites etc., and ends with the immensely powerful Satan in the lake of ice. This is great music.
As you might expect the performances are excellent, although the LPO can’t equal the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Dudamel’s award winning complete recording of Dante and there are some excellent programme notes.
The recording is less good. Being only CD quality it lacks bloom, clarity and projection and one wonders why the download and stream aren’t in higher resolution.