British composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Ades, 39, is no stranger to Carnegie Hall.
He and/or his music seems to be there multiple times every season lately. And on Saturday March 27, he makes his piano recital debut in the big hall, Stern Auditorium.
His program features a “concert paraphrase” (sounds like Liszt) of his own opera, “Powder Her Face” (1995). Can’t forget that when the opera was performed in a semi-staged version at BAM in the late 90s, the biggest hook for news coverage was the oral sex scene.
The rest of Ades’ program is wide ranging, to say the least:
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JANÁČEK
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On the Overgrown Path, Book II
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LISZT
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Isolde’s Liebestod from Wagner’sTristan und Isolde
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PROKOFIEV
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Sarcasms, Op. 17
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SCHUBERT
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Allegretto in C Minor, D. 915
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BEETHOVEN
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Bagatelles, Op. 126
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Actually, this will be the third Ades appearance in the month of March at Carnegie. Last Friday he performed in Zankel Hall with violinist Anthony Marwood and cellist Steven Isserlis. And on Wednesday this week he conducts the Ensemble ACJW. His own music is included on both programs.
Last season I attended a concert of the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie that included Ades’ “Tevot” before the Mahler Sixth Symphony. It was an overwhelming evening, fatiguing even. The thing that comes to mind most right now is the disparity between Thomas Ades when he spoke from the stage – not quiet stammering, but certainly modest and matter of fact and even a little shy – and the brash, inventive and impudent character of his music.
I believe it was from Alex Ross‘ 1998 New Yorker profile of Ades that I learned the composer was gay. Clever of Alex to bury it deep deep into the story by mentioning that they ran into each other at a gay bar in the day or two after their interview (at last that’s how I recall the story going).
Just came across a 2007 profile, “Don’t Call Me a Messiah,” by Peter Culshaw in the London Telegraph. It includes a fine description of Ades’ style, if it can be called that:
Most music critics have been hugely impressed, if occasionally left a little cold, by the sheer cleverness of Adès’ music, the brilliantly original sonorities and rhythmic invention, the way it absorbs and spits out the history of music. He cannibalises and re-imagines wildly eclectic musical influences – from Ligeti to Janácek, from the Astor Piazzolla-influenced tango of his first opera “Powder Her Face” to his piece “Brahms,” which was an “anti-homage” to the composer. There was even the thump of house music in a section of his 1997 piece “Asyla.”
Near the end, Culshaw includes a bit on the guy’s personal life:
Adès was one of the first to take advantage of the civil partnership rules to commit to his partner, the video artist Tal Rosner. Does he recommend getting hitched? “I can’t recommend anything more. It’s fantastic.” Friends attribute some of Adès’s new-found equilibrium in his life and his music to the relationship.
Does he think there is such a thing as a gay aesthetic in his music? “Well, there was in Powder Her Face [about the notorious Duchess of Argyll]. I don’t know. I’ve thought about doing an opera with two male leads, but would that be too gay, too contrived.”
It’s always a pleasure to find that there are other journalists who’ll broach such matters now and then. As well as composers – talented and prominent – willing to talk.
Here’s a bit of the orchestral suite on “Powder Her Face.”
Mr. Ades, you won’t write a gay opera because its “too gay, too contrived” C’mon!! That is a cop out if I ever heard one. Sound to me that you are “too scared”. Don’t you think that 400 years of opera plots are ‘gay and contrived’ already??—you simply are adding a little more with 2 men as romantic leads. Mr. Ades, you have an opportunity to celebrate your union by being a musical/operatic voice for thousands of gay couples who are woefully underrespresented in operas. We are the invisible people. How about making us visible musically, hmmm? Courage, Mr. Ades, courage!