Thomas Adès’ two-season residency with the Leipzig Gewandhaus continued on 3 October with Totentanz for baritone, mezzo-soprano, and large orchestra. The performance, conducted by the composer, featured Mark Stone and Jess Dandy as soloists.
At 35 minutes Totentanz ranks among Adès’ most substantial concert works; its dance of death joins the ‘Tango mortale’ of Arcadiana (1994) and the grotesque ‘cancan macabre’ that concludes Lieux Retrouvés (2009). Its episodes are drawn from a thirty-metre-long hanging of painted cloth made in 1463 for the church of St Mary in Lübeck, destroyed during the Second World War. Setting the German text of the frieze, the piece unfolds as a dialogue between a charismatic and gleefully macabre Grim Reaper (baritone) and the procession of his many victims (mezzo soprano) who we meet in strictly descending order of importance, from Pope and Cardinal to Maiden and Child.
These characters are brought to vivid musical life: clanging anvils and military side-drum herald the arrival of the Knight, whilst rustic, off-kilter horn writing describes the Peasant. The work grows towards a ferocious culmination where the full orchestral forces are unleashed, with each player attacking the thunderous music independently in a cacophonous aleatoric climax. The Dies irae chant is woven throughout – recalling dances of death by Berlioz and Liszt – in shrill outbursts from woodwind; eight percussionists utilise an array of whistles, ratchets and animal bones, as well as a vast Taiko drum, to cataclysmic effect.
Adès conducted the world premiere of Totentanz at the BBC Proms in 2013, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Simon Keenleyside and Christianne Stotijn. In the decade since he has conducted it with the New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2022 he made his Vienna Philharmonic conducting debut with the piece in Vienna and Budapest.
On 6 October Adès also appeared alongside Katalin Károlyi and musicians from the orchestra for the German premiere of Növények, seven Hungarian poems for mezzo-soprano and piano sextet. The 17-minute piece is Adès’ first set of original songs in nearly thirty years and sets four great Hungarian poets: Attila József (1905-1937), Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944), Sándor Weöres (1913-1989) and Otto Orbán (1936-2002). The programme also featured Adès’ Living Toys (1993), a dreamlike vision of a child’s playthings coming to life, replete with soldiers in battle, a bullfight, and HAL from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Gewandhaus continued their Adès focus on 29 October with the German premiere of the chamber orchestra version of The Origin of the Harp, conducted by Gemma New. Premiered by Adès and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in April 2024, the 9-minute piece is an orchestration of Adès’ 1994 tone poem after a painting by Daniel Maclise, whose subject is the Celtic legend of a water nymph who is turned by the Gods into a harp. It was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Aspen Music Festival and School.
On 19 December Andris Nelsons will lead orchestra, MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor in the world premiere of an extended version of America (1999). Commissioned by Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Hallé, this version adds a third movement to the apocalyptic work, giving it a new duration of approximately 22 minutes. Adès sets further passages, adapted by himself, from the visionary 18th-century Mayan Chilam Balam.