Thomas Adès returned to Manchester as part of his Artistic Residency with The Hallé on 27 March to conduct the UK premiere of the expanded version of America: A Prophecy, joined by the Hallé Choir and soprano Anna Dennis. The programme also included Adès’ Dawn and works by Saariaho and Stravinsky. Listen to the BBC Radio 3 broadcast here.
America sets passages from the Mayan Chilam Balam (the visionary Jaguar Priest: abstruse, dark, and portentous poetic texts combining prophecy with calendar, astronomy, religion and many other elements), adapted by the composer from the translation The Destruction of the Jaguar by Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno. For the chorus, Adès also draws on the ‘ensalada’ La Guerra by sixteenth-century Catalan composer Matteo Flexa.
The latter is a medley of popular tunes, praising the conquistadores and describing their military and religious triumph in Spanish (in the first movement) and, quoting St John, in Latin (in the second movement). Taken altogether these texts point to the brutal colonisation of Central and South America. Musical clashes complement these textual and cultural antagonisms: the ‘Maya’ material that opens the work is assailed by eruptions of Spanish music in the shape of violent fanfares. The soloist sings both a prophecy and a lament.
Commissioned by Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Hallé, the 2024 version adds a third movement to this apocalyptic work, giving it a new duration of 21 minutes. Adès sets further passages from the Chilam Balam. ‘In every birth a death / In every death a birth / This is the story of the world’, the chorus intones, with vocal soloist joining the chorus for the work’s final peroration. Adès conducted the world premiere of the new version with the Leipzig Gewandhaus in December 2024, as part of his two-season residency there, followed by the US premiere of the piece with the Cleveland Orchestra in February 2025, with mezzo soprano Sasha Cooke as soloist. On May 16 America makes its Estonian debut with Olari Elts conducting the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, State Choir Latvija, and Emma Bell as soloist, closing the orchestra’s 24/25 season.
The concert at Bridgewater Hall opened with Adès’ 2020 work Dawn, a ‘Chacony for orchestra at any distance’. In the 7-minute work, conceived with flexible instrumentation and with its players placed around the hall in any way, Adès imagines “the sunrise as a constant event that moves continuously around the world”, the chaconne providing the means for this perpetual musical revelation. It premiered at the 2020 BBC Proms with Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra and its world premiere recording was made by Nicholas Collon and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.