In August 2025 Thomas Adès and Kirill Gerstein appeared with the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris on a tour to the Quincena Musical de San Sebastián Festival and Festival Ravel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, performing Adès’ Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. The duo also gave a recital on 29 August in Cibourre in which they performed the Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face.
The three movements of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra follow a traditional pattern. The Allegramente contrasts a rhythmic first theme with a more expressive second subject. A glowering chorale from woodwinds and brass introduces the Andante gravemente, before the searching melody that ensues in the piano strives for an effusive climax. The Allegro giojoso finale begins with a call to arms that precipitates a burlesque canon.
The composer has conducted numerous performances of the Concerto, most often with Kirill Gerstein as soloist, who has given over fifty performances of the work to date and recorded the Concerto with the Boston Symphony in 2019. In the 2025/26 season Gerstein presents the piece with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra.
Adès has previously appeared with the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris in Calixto Bieito’s celebrated 2024 production of The Exterminating Angel at the Opéra Bastille and in 2023 to conduct The Dante Project, choreographed by Wayne McGregor with designs and video by Tacita Dean.
Adès’ music for the stage appears as part of the composer’s programme at the BBC Proms on 2 September, alongside works by Sibelius, and the UK debut of Gabriella Smith’s organ concerto Breathing Forests with James McVinnie. Five Spells from the Tempest was premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele in May 2022; their world premiere recording released in March 2025. Adès has since presented the 22-minute piece with the LA Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. Omitting movement four (‘The Feast’), it is also available as Four Spells from the Tempest, at 16 minutes in length.
Adès described Five Spells in an interview with the LPO:
I wanted to evoke a storm that is the result of a kind of geometrical magic, engineered by Prospero…The next movement is Ariel’s first appearance…Ariel is the wind, and Prospero organises her into a storm. That’s what composing is to me – organising the air into a moving geometry.
On 4 July Platoon released Kirill Gerstein’s world premiere recording of Suite from ‘The Tempest’ with Christian Tetzlaff. The 9 ½-minute work for violin and piano, premiered by the duo at Kronberg Academy in 2022, draws on music from Adès 2003 opera that depicts Prospero’s mystical companions – Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban. The pair discuss the piece here.