Adès' Journey from Hades to Paradise

 

It is no overstatement to say the Boston Symphony's performance tonight, led by Thomas Adès and consisting of Stravinsky's Perséphone, with music from his epic Dante Project - The Dante Suite, Paradiso, and Awakening, was among the most important and moving concerts I have experienced in a lifetime of concertgoing.  I realize how that must sound, but there it is. Performed together, we are given two of the great ballets of the last century, each proving just how strongly their scores can exist, independently, and away from the ballet stage.  Without choreography or sets, without costumes, lighting, or, indeed, dancers, these prove to be concert works of bold artistic vision, powerful and profoundly moving on their own musical merits.

Through a proliferation of commissions and representing a diversification of forms both wide - and wild - Adès has established himself as one of the most important composers of our time. His works have played and are playing among the major opera houses, including Covent Garden, La Scala, The Met, Vienna and more, as well as virtually every major concert venue across the globe. As its first Artistic Partner, the Boston Symphony has, these past seven years, been the fortunate recipient of his gifts as he has given premieres of major works, conducted the various ensembles of and within the BSO, performed recital and chamber work, made recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, and served as Director of Tanglewood's Contemporary Music Festival.  

Adès' love of Stravinsky is well known, and his selection of the too-rarely performed  Perséphone was a wise and telling choice. Arriving over two decades after Le Sacre du printemps, Perséphone is Stravinsky's second ballet focusing on Spring, though the differences between the two are immense if not glaring. While the earlier ballet has become more popular, in many ways the latter exposes a far more experienced and nuanced composer and the massive score reflects that employing, a huge orchestra, two choruses, tenor soloist and narrator. Within that score one hears "most" of Stravinsky's styles, here is the jaunty dancing rhythms of Dumbarton Oaks, here the sheer power of the choruses and tenor soloist from Oedipus Rex there, the delicacy of The Rake's Progress, and so on.

In Adès's hands all of this - as well as his love for this composer's music cme through brilliantly.  The nuances and textual transitions were seamless . . . . sudden . . . effective.  Eumopolus, the Priest, begins the first Tableaux with an invocation setting the tone for the story to follow and tenor Edgaras Montvidas was ideal and engaging in the role, his clear, bright tenor precise and lyrical in much of the role, but expanding in power in those moments demanded by the score. As the Narrator, soprano Danielle De Niese was a vision, stunning in her flowery, billowy dress that "felt" like Spring in this cold, gray New England weather. Unamplified, it took a minute for ears to adjust to the soft grained, girlish timbre her voice, but then her delicate intensity of the spoken was touching, effective, her face, arms and hands reflective of the moving story she presented us. 

The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and the Boys of Saint Paul's Choir School, did yeoman's work, and, again, led through their paces by Mr. Adès, and the soloists every moment pulled together forming a seamless and entirely satisfying whole.  The first half of this epic night was a major success, the appreciative (if smallish) audience calling back the principals, and cheering the splendid work of the chorus.

The second half, featuring Adès conducting music from his Dante Project could not have been more highly anticipated. On the heels of nothing but raves for performances both onstage (The Royal Ballet Covent Garden), and in concert (the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudemel) the composer looked positively on-top-of-the-world as he took to the podium.  As with Perséphone, Adès is a fun conductor to watch, while not wild he is, nonetheless, a conductor of big gestures, and it was an enormous pleasure to watch the interactions between him and the musicians, most of whom looked as excited as he did.  Even the crimson lining peaking through the vents as he moved felt special.  The eight movements of the Inferno Suite revealed a composer adept at virtually every style of so-called "modern" music - a bit of Hollywood here, some nods to Wagnery-Mussorgsky magic there, delicate, almost seemingly invisible music yielding suddenly to a bombast of brass and pounding drums . . .  it's an exhilarating, glorious and yes, fun, cachaphony of sound. Nowhere is that sense of fun more evident than in Section XII The Thieves - devoured by snakes.  Here Adès just cuts loose in what I can only describe as a fistfight between Shostakovich and Rossini.  Fast and furious, the conductor even at one point jumping into the air, it obviously did not matter that there was still one movement to go, for at the conclusion of this penultimate one, the hall burst into roars with cheering, and frenetic applause - many even jumping to their feet before XIII Satan - in the lake of ice was allowed to conclude the suite.  Honestly, I cannot recall a similar reaction in the middle of ANY work, ever. I almost sensed the composer "daring" us to stay quiet.    

Following a brief pause for the ladies of the chorus to assemble, we continued with Paradiso, and here was the magic of programming made manifest.  Dante's presence - his influence on this "project" is fulfilled in Adès' amazing use of an immense palette of colors from the orchestra. An almost endless development of a simple theme that rises slowly, hypnotically, at times almost imperceptibly, builds, feeling as though it might never end  (nor did I want it to).  As it rises, weaving through a tapestry of riches, it evokes our notions of of heaven . . . of the cosmos. And then . . . oh, and then . . . we are greeted by the entrance of the worldless female voices - the heavens opening, and the full beauty of this moment feels as splendid as the sun. My eyes misted with tears, mouths fell open (yes, they did!) and it was, indeed, as magical as any music I have experienced in any concert hall.  So powerful was this effect . . . so beautiful, that for a brief moment nobody did - or could do - anything. As the music faded, it gave way to an explosion of bravos, cheers, whistles (the good kind) and a pounding ocean of applause. There was, a palpable sense we had witnessed something rare.  We had.