On 27 February Thomas Adès is joined by Kirill Gerstein for the Canadian premieres of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Paradiso, the final part of Dante, with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. It will be Adès’ first appearance on the concert platform in Canada since 2012, when he conducted The Tempest at the Opéra de Québec.
Paradiso describe Dante and Virgil’s 24-minute climb towards Heaven. The piece, in ten unbroken sections, is built around the motion of an ascending spiral. Its starlit journey sees the orchestra joined by a female chorus – in Toronto, Soundstreams Choir 21 – singing a wordless text at its radiant conclusion. The music for Paradiso was partly inspired by Gustave Doré’s illustrations for the final part of The Divine Comedy: “their millions of tiny angels vanishing into rings of pure white”, the composer notes. Adès has previously conducted the piece in concert with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Boston Symphony. In Toronto Adès presents another celestial journey in the form of Holst’s The Planets in the second half of the programme.
To date, Kirill Gerstein has given over fifty performances of Adès’ Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, many with Adès on the rostrum; he recorded the Concerto with the Boston Symphony and the composer in 2019. They have presented the piece together with the Chicago Symphony, Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Bavarian Radio, and Helsinki Philharmonic.
Its three movements follow a tradition pattern. The opening 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 piano then takes up a tumbling melody “in the style of a ball bouncing down stairs”, as Adès puts it, which then winds down before falling off another precipice and tripping towards a joyful conclusion.
In March Gerstein will also perform the piece with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Nicholas Collon; a recital programme this spring, which takes in the Musikverein, Boulez Saal, Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan, and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, includes Adès’ solo piano works Thrift and Az ág, alongside Francisco Coll’s Two Waltzes Toward Civilization.