Kirill Gerstein, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Adès – Adès Conducts Adès (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Kirill Gerstein, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Adès – Adès Conducts Adès (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:59 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

In March this year, Thomas Adès, one of the most acclaimed and most frequently performed contemporary composers of our time, conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Kirill Gerstein performing the world premiere of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. Comissioned by the BSO for Kirill Gerstein the work already is becoming part of the concert repertoire worldwide.

This live recording of what turned out to be a ravishing celebration of contemporary music, receiving rapturous response from audience and critics alike, is paired on the album with Adès’s 2013 work Totentanz.

Totentanz brings together baritone (Mark Stone) and mezzo-soprano (Christianne Stotijn) soloists with a (very) large orchestra, unfolding a dialogue between a charismatic and gleefully macabre Grim Reaper and the procession of his many victims, from Pope to Maiden and Child.

Written in 2018 for his favorite pianist Kirill Gerstein, Thomas Adès’s Concerto for Piano has been a worldwide success. Commissioned by the Boston Symphony, where the piece premiered on March 7, 2019, and where it was recorded, it is already part of the program of fifty soon-to-be concerts in Europe and in the US, all to be performed by its exclusive dedicatee.

A twenty-minute-long piece with a classical three-movement structure, the concerto mixes every genre and influence with kaleidoscopic and skillful talent. The new piece includes many influences, mainly hinting at Twentieth-century piano concertos, such as works by Ravel, Prokofiev, Bartók, Poulenc, and Rachmaninov, as well as Gershwin’s jazzy style, peppering the whole composition. This new piece takes the past into account and will be recognizable to traditionalist audiences of classical music concerts.

The second part of the album, that Thomas Adès, one of the most well-known and performed contemporary composers, also dedicates to himself, includes his Totentanz (“Dance of Death”) for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and orchestra. The piece was composed in 2013 for the famous London Proms’ series to celebrate Britten and Lutosławski’s hundred-year anniversary, two essential composers of the twentieth century. Recorded during a concert that took place in Boston in 2016, Totentanz is inspired by a famous mural in Lübeck’s Saint Mary’s Church, bombed by the allied forces in 1942. Adès’ Totentanz is part of a rich tradition where the fragility of the human condition is explored in relation to contemporary tragedies. – François Hudry

Tracklist:

01. Kirill Gerstein – 1. – (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2019) (07:34)
02. Kirill Gerstein – 2. – (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2019) (07:00)
03. Kirill Gerstein – 3. – (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2019) (06:50)
04. Mark Stone – Der Prediger (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (01:16)
05. Mark Stone – Der Tod (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (01:56)
06. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Papst – Der Papst (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (01:51)
07. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Kaiser – Der Kaiser (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (02:15)
08. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Kardinal – Der Kardinal (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (02:41)
09. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum König – Der König (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (01:55)
10. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Mönch – Der Mönch (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (01:41)
11. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Ritter – Der Ritter – Der Tod zum Bürgermeister – Der Bürgermeister (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (01:49)
12. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Arzt – Der Arzt – Der Tod zum Wucherer – Der Wucherer (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (00:45)
13. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Kaufmann – Der Kaufmann (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (02:05)
14. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Küster – Der Küster – Der Tod zum Küster (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (04:01)
15. Christianne Stotijn – Der Handwerker – Der Tod zum Handwerker (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (02:20)
16. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Bauer – Der Bauer (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (02:13)
17. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Mädchen – Das Mädchen (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (02:57)
18. Christianne Stotijn – Der Tod zum Kind – Das Kind (Live at Symphony Hall, Boston / 2016) (04:43)

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