British composer Thomas Adès is no stranger to depictions of the afterlife. Returning to the Concertgebouw stage slightly later than planned for the Dutch premiere of his 2019 co-commission with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, therefore, was an intriguing combination. Premiered in 2019 by the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel, Inferno | Part 1 is a ballet score based on Dante’s Divine Comedy which charts the author’s journey through hell. Adding into the mix, the hugely talented Yuja Wang whose performance of Prokofiev’s fiendishly difficult Second Piano Concerto sounded like heaven on earth, was quite literally a match made in heaven.
The programme
Yuja Wang plays Prokofiev
A sea of calm descended as Wang, dressed in a stunning full-length sparkly dress, took to the stage. Adès’ large, sweeping movements pushing the orchestra forward, created an intriguing tension between soloist and orchestra, cleverly intensifying her sea of calm. Taking much more care with the orchestral sound than is perhaps usual, Adès recreated Wang’s opening calm as if viewing the orchestra through a translucent window. His attractive luminosity intensifying the angularity of the piano’s rhythms. Wang’s cadenza, one long gasp of endless virtuosity, built to a tumultuous climax before imposing brass melted, like flecks of dust in the sunlit sky, and the piano’s breathless calm descended once more.
Full of hustle and bustle, the Vivace saw flashes of colour pinging every which way before thudding boots of doom, rasping brass and a ghostly tuba made way for oriental mysticism – the piano’s glissandos, shimmering in the early morning sun. An astonishing display of agility and accuracy saw Wang again pit serene calm against the tumultuous. Her attractive lyricism made the difficult sound easy, seemingly triumphing against the horrors of hell. One dare not take a breath. If this initial collaboration is anything to go by, the genesis of a third piano concerto from the British composer may already be in the offing.
Three encores
With Adès now perched on the Concertgebouw steps, Wang launched into three unforgettable encores: Márquez’s Dance no. 2, Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words Op. 67 No. 2 and Boris Giltburg’s arrangement of theAllegro from Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet. Those dazzling fingered octaves defied belief!
Thomas Adès conducts the Dutch premiere
If the first half had been all about heaven, what followed depicted hell in its many guises. And while the opening of Adès’Inferno initially abandons all sense of hope, subsequent character pieces (thirteen in total) using “stolen music – quotations, allusions and arrangements that blend together” are an eclectic insight into the mind of surely one of the most talented and gifted composers of the day. Even his titles conjure magic.
While The Selfish (fleeing, whilst ‘stung by wasps’) and The Suicides (‘bleeding trees, mauled by harpies’) faced the full might of the RCO brass plus the bass drum’s beating-heart-of-doom, tension completely faded in The Ferryman as undulating cellos carried the tortured souls across the river, gently accompanied by a haunting cor anglais. Similarly the Renaissance inspired Pavan of the Souls in Limbo used the violins and harp to conjure innocent glimpses of hope. Equally compelling were the horns, creating The Gluttons’ sludgy mire of lazy insouciance. Pitted against the violin and woodwind’s seductive sleaziness, their soaring magnificence in the capable hands of principal horn Katy Woolley, both here, and later in The Hypocrites, seemed to embody a new eternity and man’s triumph over death. Simply stunning.
The surprises
Wooden (kitchen) spatulas paired with castanets were a revelation in The Deviants’ jaunty waltz as they ‘crawled across burning sand’. The surprise of the evening however, were The Thieves who, newly transformed into giant lizards, found themselves centre stage in a circus! Adès, the proud circus ringmaster, directing all with precision and ease, restraining his noisy rabble, complete with raucous brass, whistles and whips.
Satan though was never far away; the piccolo’s wails found reality knocking again on Hell’s door. There was no escape from Satan’s all-consuming power. Those final notes, magnetically drawn to one another, just as Adès intended.
A little more Yuja
The ballet
The original idea to turn Adès’ 2019 score into a ballet score came at the suggestion of Royal Ballet choreographer, Wayne McGregor. Their subsequent 2021 staging became known as The Dante Project. It was conducted by Koen Kessels who is now also Music Director at Dutch National Ballet. Watch an extract below:
More on the commission
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