Repertoire
Franz Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (1856-61) 11’
Thomas Adès: Märchentänze for violin and orchestra (2021) 15′ – National premiere, Co-commissioned by L’Auditori, the Finnish Radio Symphony, Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Francis Poulenc: Les biches (The Hinds), ballet suite (1940) 20’
Thomas Adès: “Hotel Suite” from Powder Her Face opera, suite No. 3 (1995-2018) 18’
Artists
Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (OBC)
Pekka Kuusisto, violin
Thomas Adès, conductor
Program
Eclectic, burgeoning and unorthodox, the music of Thomas Adès offers a sonic journey through transposed structures, poles that are attracted and repelled, points of view which are nearby and distant at the same time. As a conclusion to the invitation to be a guest composer during this season and the previous one, Märchentänze (Fairy Tale Dances), a concert for violin and orchestra commissioned by L’Auditori together with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Göteborgs Symfoniker.
PROGRAMWith Hotel Suite, Thomas Adès creates an orchestral suite based on Powder Her Face (1995), a chamber opera with a plot based on the scandalous divorce of the aristocrat Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll.
The first of Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes, called Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (The Dance in the Village Inn), takes as its programme an episode from Nikolaus Lenau’s Faust, specifically the one in which Faust seduces and kidnaps a maiden in the tavern, inflamed by Mephistopheles’ skill on the violin. The inspiration for the legend of the pact with the devil by Faust has, in the piece by Liszt, one of the most genuine incarnations of ecstasy and romantic fullness.
