At the “Meet the composer” talk right before the opening concert of this year’s Composer Festival, I discovered that Thomas Adès seems to be a genuinely sympathetic guy with a great sense of humor and lots of integrity. And during the talk with the slightly manic woman from the Swedish Radio (the concert was aired live), he managed to answer her clichéd questions with a typically British wit and lightheartedness. Wonderful.
The concert featured the Violin Concerto as well as Tevot, the much hyped concert piece premiered by the Berlin Philharmonics in 2007. To my knowledge it hasn’t been recorded commercially yet, although I have in my possession a rather dodgy radio recording that I’ve been listening to. Being able to hear it live though just made the experience so much more powerful – it really is a masterpiece, and so this year’s Composer festival started with a bang. This was definitely one of the top three concerts I’ve been to so far this year.
(Update: The whole concert has now been made available as a stream on Swedish Radio’s website.)
