Notes from the Edge

PROSPECT MAY ARTS & BOOKS Neil Norman Notes from the edge Recommends Thomas Adès is the most gifted British composer of his time, but his love of musical extremes holds him back, argues Ivan Hewett Opera Don Carlo “Even as the UK is brimming with wonderful one high-prestige venue to another, con- Royal Opera House, 12th to 29th May Inspired by Schiller’s 1787 dramatic young composers, I think few would dispute ducting in Salzburg one week, Los Angeles poem, Verdi’s masterpiece went through that Tom Adès may be the most extrava- the next. Some years ago his music was the a number of revisions. When Luchino gantly gifted of them all.” So claims Simon subject of three major retrospectives simul- Visconti directed the five-act version at Rattle, who will soon be returning from Ber- taneously, on three different continents. As Covent Garden in 1958, it was con- lin to lead the London Symphony Orches- an awed critic said to me, not even Britten sidered unbeatable. Nicholas Hytner’s tra. Few would dispute his assertion. Born in attracted attention on such a scale. version (below) made its debut in 2008 London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano Yet more superlatives are being thrown and has become a Royal Opera stalwart. and composition at the Guildhall before at Adès in the wake of the recent premiere Although the auto-da-fé sequence still going on to create orchestral and operatic in Salzburg of his opera The Exterminating troubles some, it is a worthy successor to works that have won him enormous acclaim Angel. (It comes to Covent Garden on 24th the Visconti. The Renaissance has rarely and popularity—even among those who tra- April). Based on Luis Buñuel’s 1962 surreal- looked—or sounded—so profound, dark ditionally avoid modern classical music. For ist film, it follows the fate of 15 dinner guests and compelling. US tenor Bryan Hymel some he is our greatest composer since Ben- trapped in a dining room by some unseen takes on the challenging title role. jamin Britten. power as they descend into madness and And yet Rattle’s praise doesn’t quite strike anarchy. The praise has been rapturous. “A the right note. He suggests Adès differs from turning point for Adès and opera itself,” said his peers simply in the “extravagance” of his the Observer; the Telegraph, more circum- gifts. But in many respects Adès is unique. spect, commented on the music’s hyperac- He floats above other composers at a rar- tivity mingled with rapt beauty and brilliant efied altitude of celebrity, winning in his moments of parody. twenties prizes that normally go to compos- Adès’s uncanny brilliance can’t be denied; ers in their seventies. He first came to pop- but a balanced critical evaluation of his work ular attention with his 1995 opera Powder is overdue. “Miraculous” is how his music is Her Face, his portrayal (with librettist Philip often described, and as with all miracles, Hensher) of the tragicomic fate of the scan- attempts to judge his work seem to be ruled dalous Duchess of Argyll. That work is now an act of impiety. Given his fame, the almost a fixture in the operatic repertoire. complete absence of serious critical writing © CATHERINE ASHMORE © CATHERINE One of Adès’s favourite quotations is from on Adès is astonishing; for whatever his tal- André Breton: “Life is elsewhere.” And that’s ents, he is far from the finished article. where he always seems to be—flitting from This is an extreme version of some- Ravi Shankar’s Sukanya thing we’ve seen before. The English have a Curve, Leicester, 12th May then touring strange need to discover a wunderkind every Legendary sitar-player Ravi Shankar began decade or so, as if to reassure themselves composing his only opera at the age of 90. that the land ohne musik—as a German critic Now the Royal Opera and London Phil- sniffily described us in 1904—can now hold harmonic join forces to produce a semi- its head up high. In the 1970s, it was Oliver staged touring production which begins in Knussen; in the 1980s, it was George Ben- Leicester and ends at the Royal Festival jamin. Just as Benjamin was entering into a Hall. Named after Shankar’s wife, it tells protracted fallow period in the early 1990s, a of Princess Sukanya in a tale derived from young Adès came along, right on cue. the Mahabarata. Shankar employs both His Chamber Symphony was premiered Indian and western classical music in a in 1991 when he was still a music student fusion of dance, music and myth. Susanna at Cambridge. At the time rumours had Hurrell takes the title role and the Aakash already spread about a talented young Odedra Company choreograph. composer who wore white suits and The Magic Flute looked like Oscar Wilde. He reached the Charles Court Opera, King’s Head, Lon- final of BBC Young Musician of the Year don, 4th May to 3rd June as a pianist in 1990, was an expressive if The King’s Head plays host to the Charles ungainly conductor of his own works and Court Opera company, whose “boutique” a dazzling composer. productions of Gilbert & Sullivan have The critical terms used to describe established it as punching well above its Chamber Symphony have clung to Adès weight. Their pared-down version of The ever since. He “entrances” his listen- Magic Flute has already had critics reach- ers with magical, glittery sounds, ing for superlatives after its debut at Ilford Arts Opera Festival last year. Sung in a Strange and familiar: Thomas new version by John Savournin and David Adès is a musical phenomenon Eaton, this beautiful production includes © BRIAN_VOCE who attracts little serious criticism puppetry, magic and witty surprises. Arts & Books_v2.indd 71 06/04/2017 16:07 ARTS & BOOKS PROSPECT MAY The dinner party scenario of The Exterminating Angel is perfectly attuned to Adès’s claustrophobic world © SALZBURGERFESTSPIELE / MONIKA RITTERSHAUS which have the fascinating quality of being That same feeling is often prompted Germans love music with ponderous politi- “strange and familiar” at once. “He weaves by Adès’s music. A particularly striking cally-charged appeals to emotional depths. parody and mimicry, subliminal echoes example occurs in the big orchestral fresco We have elfin lightness. Is it any accident and ingenious borrowings, into a voice Asyla, an evocation of spaces that can either that the most celebrated English singer uniquely and fabulously his own,” said the threaten incarceration or offer sanctuary. of recent decades is Ian Bostridge, whose Independent. It’s full of the ear-tickling sound of cowbells, unearthly high tones are so well-suited to Many of the same adjectives had already tin cans, knives and forks, and an upright Britten’s music? (Adès and Bostridge once been applied to those earlier wunderkinden. piano which is a quarter-tone flat. Again the collaborated on a performance of Schubert’s It’s surely no accident that Adès, Knussen Winterreise, which was strange, haunted and Benjamin are all published by Faber “If Adès can find a way of and “extra-terrestrial” in exactly the way Music, which was co-founded by Britten in one expected). 1965. There is a definite family resemblance cultivating the centre Adès would probably take being pigeon- running through all four: an expressive ground rather than holed as a purveyor of fey English enchant- world best described as magical. mounting guerrilla raids ment as evidence of the essential stupidity Britten had a genius for evoking of critics. For a composer who has been so enchanted states, where sometimes the on it, he could become uniformly praised, he has a puzzling loath- magic is good as in A Midsummer Night’s the great composer he ing of critics. (He has a furious contempt for Dream, and sometimes rotten to the core, some composers too, once labelling Wag- as in The Turn of the Screw. The sound of ought to be” ner as “fungal.”) He absolutely doesn’t want glittery-tuned percussion runs through his to be compared with the wunderkinden of music, a sound that reappears refracted effect is of delicious uncertainty and dislo- recent decades, and has done his best to dis- through the sound-world of avant-garde cation. One literally can’t believe one’s ears. tance himself from Britten by pouring scorn composers like Pierre Boulez and György His opera The Tempest, first seen at Covent on his music. “In The Turn of the Screw the Ligeti. Knussen composed two operas Garden in 2004, is full of musical “enchant- formal conceits only show up the one-dimen- based on Maurice Sendak’s children’s sto- ment” as befits Shakespeare’s late romance. sionality of the piece,” he says, one of many ries, which are shot through with echoes It has a big part for a coloratura soprano, instances of lèse-majesté in his fascinating vol- of Modest Mussorgsky and Maurice Ravel. who at one point is required to sing a top E ume of conversations with Tom Service enti- George Benjamin’s music is magical in its 18 times in a row. tled Full of Noises. essence. In his early Chamber Symphony The magical strain appeals to the Eng- There is indeed something distinctive there are moments when you ask your- lish. They warm to things suggestive of light- about Adès. To get a sense of what that is, self “what is making that extraordinary ness and the otherworldly. Americans warm one only has to listen to the third movement sound?”—and discover it’s newspapers to pop-flavoured minimalism, tinged by of Asyla.

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