Adès Album

When I was still a teenager, I would listen to Thomas Adès’s Traced Overhead again and again, dazzled by its translucent color and comforting warmth. The ending of the solo piano piece, lasting about 12-minute long, has such a strong sense of emotional relief that I was once moved into tears. Since then, I have not stopped exploring the composer’s oeuvre.

Mr. Adès was so kind that he decided to coach me for this recording. In the coaching, he was tremendously keen and helpful. He knew exactly what he wanted in the music, but he was also open-minded when it came to new interpretations. This album is the first commercial recording to release his Blanca Variations, so he paid close attention to all the details. Even though, he was still able to inspire me with the larger picture by explaining its appearance in his opera The Exterminating Angel and his relationship with the Ladino folk song Lavaba la blanca niña.

Mr. Adès himself is an impeccable pianist, which is shown fully in his Paraphrase on Powder Her Face, a four-movement concert arrangement of his first opera. The Paraphrase looks back to the soloistic bravura in the Romantic era, full of Lisztian showiness and rhapsodic passages. The Paraphrase has its own life, tailored for the instrument, imparting the operatic materials a new narrative.

The album was intended to include a complete account for Mr. Adès’s piano solo genre, but the endeavor did not catch up with his prolificacy. Nevertheless, the album still pays my utmost homage to him and his music.

(The Album will be released by Naxos on April 10, 2020. More details TBA)