From 23-27 March Thomas Adès featured as BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Work, discussing his life and career across five hour-long programmes with Donald Macleod, alongside selections from his music. Listen to Composer of the Week here.
The programmes explore myriad aspects of Adès’ body of work, starting with the explosive success of Powder Her Face and influences from the composer’s early life that fed his compositional imagination; other episodes touch on his creation of opera The Tempest (2003), and his extensive performing career as a pianist, conductor, and artistic director and programmer. The week concludes by exploring his most recent scenic, orchestral, and chamber works – opera The Exterminating Angel, ballet Dante, Aquifer, Piano Concerto, and song cycle Növények.
In early 2026 Adès has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony Orchestras, conducting Aquifer, the Violin Concerto with Augustin Hadelich, and the extended version of America, for chorus, orchestra, and soloist, with soprano Anna Dennis.
In April he returns to Paris to conduct the French debut of Aquifer with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France as well as present the piano concerto In Seven Days with Bertrand Chamayou. Later in April he returns to the Hallé, where he is Artist-in-Residence, to perform Lieux retrouvés with Nicolas Altstaedt, alongside Kurtág, Ives, and Debussy.