10 questions with Thomas Adès

Mon 31 Mar, 2025

We caught up with British conductor and composer Thomas Adès ahead of his album release Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites on the LPO Label with the Orchestra.

How would you characterise the ‘LPO Sound’?

I would say it’s rich, full and has an edge that I like very much. It is eloquent – that’s all I would say. But it depends on the music as well. The LPO adapts to different styles. You know, my music has a large number of different voices, and they bring each one out very vividly.

 

When you are both conductor and composer, how do you balance the demands of getting the music tidy and together for a concert with your intention to communicate with the orchestra as a composer?

One thing my experience as a conductor has taught me is that orchestras are more aware than the conductor might assume in the first rehearsal of what is supposed to come together and what isn’t. They have a lot of experience in making an orchestral sound, so I no longer waste as much time as I used to saying, ‘That should be together with that’, because actually, as they get to know it, a lot of things correct themselves.

It’s about knowing what you need to spend time on – things they might not intuit from their own parts – and what they will figure out naturally. Then there’s shaping the music. Orchestras are incredibly experienced at following a conductor’s gestures. You can show an awful lot without speaking too much, just through physical language. Then it’s about knowing when you do need to say something – how best to convey it in the shortest possible time.

I learn all the time. Sometimes I realise, ‘The reason that doesn’t work is because I haven’t put the right marking on it as a composer’. So I do increasingly find I need to edit things – change bowings, change markings – because the clearer you can be with that, the more likely you are to get the result you want.

I think we are all creating in the moment, actually. You can change a score based on a rehearsal adjustment, and then the next time you do it, you find that change doesn’t communicate the same thing to a different orchestra. These things are constantly mutating, and that’s part of the beauty of it. But there’s nothing like listening to a CD through multiple edits to make you think, ‘Oh, I wish I’d notated that as staccato (detached)’ or ‘I wish I’d made the oboe the same dynamic (volume) as the clarinets’. I keep saying, ‘Oh, there’s not enough horn’, and then I look, and it’s my fault because I gave the horns a different dynamic to everyone else. That’s taught me a great deal!

 

The Times reviewer described their experience of the Inferno Suite as being ‘battered by wild storms, stung by wasps, suspended in ice, almost eaten by snakes’. How would you describe the experience?

Like Bruch’s first concerto, perhaps the most unusual feature is its structure. The first movement is a slow movement, then the second is a highly dramatic (and wonderful) recitative. It is highly virtuosic throughout, so that is both fun and challenging.

 

How do you balance touring and performing with finding time to practise?

To my mind, Inferno Suite is like The Nutcracker Suite – but instead of Tchaikovsky, it’s Liszt. And instead of suites of sweets, as it were – confectionery from different countries – it’s deviants, sinners and Satan. That’s how I think of it.

I’ve always adored the Tchaikovsky ballets, The Nutcracker in particular. But I wanted to do something that had that same deliciousness, with the added benefit of being about sin and the worst possible human behaviour you can imagine – and all the punishments. There’s something very satisfying about Inferno – that hell.

 

Can you share with us some of your favourite moments in Five Spells from The Tempest, particularly around your motivations to bring out certain instruments in the orchestration?

Well, these five spells … The first one is the storm, of course, so that appears much as it does in the opera. I wanted to evoke a storm that is the result of a kind of geometrical magic, engineered by Prospero.

The next is Ariel’s first appearance. Ariel is a coloratura soprano, singing extremely high. But for the suite, instead of drawing attention to the fact that someone is singing very high, I wanted it to be an organisation of the air into a kind of moving geometry – which is also my best description of composing music. Ariel is the wind, and Prospero organises her into a storm. That’s what composing is to me – organising the air into a moving geometry.

The next movement is the love scene, where they become husband and wife on the beach as the waves wash over them. I wanted this to be a chance to hear their harmonies merge into one big tutti (all players) climax at the end.

The fourth movement is the one moment where you actually witness a magic spell in real time. Prospero conjures a feast in the air to bewilder and bewitch his enemies. The counsellor then looks at it and says, ‘This is amazing. If the world were really like this, there would be no need for money or kings or queens – it would be a utopia.’ That speech is hidden within a tuba solo. I was pleased with the melody, and I thought it would be nice to hear it on its own.

The final movement returns to the purity of the earth, sky, and sea, with Caliban alone – a little like Marlowe’s idea of der Liebe – the beloved earth, on its own.

Each of these five pieces is self-sufficient. The music is set free – the characters exist in the structure of the music itself. That was quite a long answer, wasn’t it!

 

Describe the Duchess in Luxury Suite from Powder Her Face. Is she a villain, a victim, or both? And what in the music paints her character?

I don’t see her as a villain at all – she’s simply a human. She behaves in the way that she behaves, and the other characters subject her to a sequence of moral judgments. At times, they might absurdly say she’s perfect or amazing, or that she’s a horror, a monster. All of these judgments are equally valid, if you like. One can judge for oneself how true they are, but the fact is that she’s a human. I believe it’s very important that the music makes no moral judgment. It simply tells us what happened to her – what the world does to her, what she does, and what the world does to her in return.

To me, opera is like a channel that runs between the so-called real world, as we perceive it, and the inner life – the nerves, the dreams, the thoughts, and the feelings of the character as they experience them. That’s where the music comes in. It’s vital that this ‘dream life’ is powerful and not judgmental.

Operatic music is such a powerful medium, like a river that carries the dream life of the characters.

 

These orchestral suites are reductions of their larger operatic counterparts, which also have the benefit of text to carry the story forward. How do you best tell a story when reducing an opera into an orchestral suite?

You call it the benefit of text, and that’s true. But sometimes, text can be a burden. In my case, I rarely feel that, as I have been lucky with my librettos. But musically, the text gives me a strong structure from which to create something independent.

I feel very strongly that wherever possible, the music needs to have its own independent life – strong enough that it would exist without the text. So in these suites, the music is set free, and everything is in the structure.

 

Is there anything coming up for you in the next couple of years that you are excited about and can share with us?

I’m just very excited about this fantastic new production of my third opera The Exterminating Angel, at Opera Paris. There are some plans for it to travel in 2027, which is very exciting!

Then, I’ve written a big new ending for my piece America: A Prophecy, which is going to return to New York, 25 years since it was first premiered there. It feels like a long time, but it’s a piece that’s been like one of those Voyager rockets – it went all the way into outer space. And now, it’s coming back. The ending is very cold-sounding, but I’ve finally found a way to round it off without changing the message. I’m excited about that – it’s going to be performed next January.

 

What is your most creative time of day, and what is your workspace like?

If I can organise a quiet morning, that works very well. Nowadays, I find the morning brain is more aware of lots of possibilities – like there are more possibilities the earlier I start, and then by the time it gets to what you might call lunchtime, there are fewer and fewer positive possibilities as the day goes on. Eventually, nothing is possible, and then I don’t have lunch. I call that the triumph of hope over experience.

So when I wake up, I’m full of hope that things are possible. I think, you know, when you start writing – answering somebody’s emails, for example – the first thing in the morning, you’ll find that your answers are more rich in kind of digression and ideas. That’s what I find.

Then there’s a second bit of the day, which is just before one goes out in the evening, when I call it kind of a miniaturised deadline. All sorts of decisions that you might have been hesitating over – is it this or that? – just make themselves very quickly because you’ve got to make them quickly.

When I was in my 20s, writing Powder Her Face, it was very different. I would lounge around all day, just thinking about it, then think, ‘Okay, it’s just got to be that. I’ve got no choice.’ But that was fun – it’s just not the healthiest way to spend an entire life as an artist.

 

What advice do you have for young composers?

Take this with a pinch of salt, but my advice would be – don’t go around giving out advice. (We laughed.)

 

What does a day off in London look like to you?

Because I don’t work in the afternoon, I go out – either walking or pottering around on my bike. If I have time, I go to the park and look for birds.