The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) Label has announced a new release of orchestral suites
by the prodigious English composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Adès CBE, to be released on 4
April 2025. Praised by The New York Times in 2007 as ‘one of the most accomplished and complete
musicians of his generation’, Adès conducts all three works on this release, all of which were
recorded in their UK premieres at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
The LPO has collaborated with Adès since his season as Composer-in-Focus with the Orchestra in
2000/01, and has previously released his Chamber Symphony, Op. 2 in 2008 (LPO-0035). The Times
called the work ‘exciting music, excitingly performed’.
Opening the new disc, Luxury Suite from Powder Her Face is adapted from Adès’s opera of the same
name, which was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2018. The suite was commissioned by six
arts organisations including the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Powder Her Face centres on an
ageing Duchess (in all but name the notorious real-life Duchess of Argyll) on the brink of eviction
from her hotel room, looking back over her salacious career. Bachtrack called the UK premiere by
the LPO ‘… a performance full to the brim of the decadence pervading Adès’ lavish score, from the
wailing woodwinds and melting notes of the tango … Adès and the superb LPO blazed a trail through
incandescent outbursts and reflective sobriety, showing sardonic wit and a measure of poignancy …’.
Five Spells is an orchestral suite drawn from The Tempest, Adès’s 2003 opera, based on
Shakespeare’s play, adapted by Meredith Oakes. The suite was premiered by the LPO at the 2022
Dresden Festival, and this recording captures the Orchestra’s UK premiere performance in 2023. The
Guardian praised this performance: ‘It’s a shapely precis, flecked with glistening instrumental
colours, and a welcome memento of what is Adès’s finest stage work to date.’
Adès’s three-part ballet Dante (2019), based on Dante’s The Divine Comedy, was commissioned by
the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Ballet. Taken from the first part, the Inferno Suite offers
a sharp 23’ precis of the protagonist’s journey through the fires of hell. ‘Battered by wild storms,
stung by wasps, suspended in ice, almost eaten by snakes: we hardly got out alive from Thomas
Adès’s tumultuous concert’: The Times’s four-star review recalled a visceral concert experience.
