Thomas Adès has now written four stage works, and subsequently fashioned pieces for the concert hall from each. His programme with the London Philharmonic included the most recent of those scores, the Inferno Suite and the Tempest Symphony, the latter receiving its British premiere.
It took 18 years after the Covent Garden premiere of his opera based on Shakespeare’s late play for Adès to extract his Tempest Symphony from it. Vocal lines are re-assigned to instruments – high woodwind takes over Ariel’s giddy coloratura, for instance, Prospero is sometimes a horn, more often a cello. The five movements begin with the opera’s tumultuous overture and end with the long, slow fade with which Prospero bids his final farewell; scenes for Ariel and Prospero, the lovers Ferdinand and Miranda, and the depiction of the feast that Ariel conjures up for the survivors of the shipwreck (including a gorgeous tuba solo for Gonzalo’s aria) come in between. It’s a shapely precis, flecked with glistening instrumental colours, and a welcome memento of what is Adès’s finest stage work to date.
