Introducing: Thomas Adès

Award-winning British composer Thomas Adès conducts the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time on Thursday 22 October. The programme pairs contemporary works with two Elgar favourites: the delicate Sospiri and the stirring First Symphony.

The son of a historian and of a poet, Thomas Adès is among the most prolific composers of the 21^st century, his work spanning the full range of classical instrumentation. He is perhaps best known for his operatic and orchestral works.

His first compositions date from the late 1980s, when he was studying at King’s College, Cambridge. He later studied piano and chamber music with György Kurtág, beginning a close artistic relationship that has since taken in performances, recordings and, most recently, a celebration of Kurtág’s 100th birthday at the Budapest Music Centre. For this concert, Adès conducts Kurtág’s Movement for Viola and Orchestra.

The past decade has continued to be a remarkable one. The Exterminating Angel premiered at the 2016 Salzburg Festival and was later performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London, and Opéra Bastille in Paris. Around the same time as Dawn, part of the programme for this concert, Adès stepped into the world of ballet with the premiere of The Dante Project, which he conducted at Covent Garden, London and later at Opéra Garnier, Paris.

Recent honours include the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2022), the Ivor Novello Award (2023) and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal, presented by Simon Rattle at the BBC Proms the following year. This summer, he conducted the National Youth Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall as part of this year’s Proms, and he will shortly take up the post of Principal Guest Conductor of the Hallé.

To see Thomas Adès lead the OPO through some of Elgar’s most adored compositions on Thursday 22 October, get your tickets on our website here or call our box office on 01865 980 980.

Cover photo by Mathias Benguigui

An evening of music framed by Elgar, the composer who has captured the essence of England in music more resonantly than any other. Elgar’s Sospiri is a love-sick Adagio while his Symphony No. 1 appears to carry the hopes of a troubled nation in music of deep longing and optimism. As the composer who has inherited Elgar’s mantle in England, Thomas Adès also conducts his own Dawn – an intense meditation on cycles of time, light and renewal and a masterpiece in miniature. In this concert, it forms the missing link before Kurtág’s Movement for Viola and Orchestra – a grippingly physical opening to a full concerto, the rest of which was scrapped.

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