Ivan Hewett
“Even as the UK is brimming with wonderful young composers, I think few would dispute that Tom Adès may be the most extravagantly gifted of them all.” So claims Simon Rattle, who will soon be returning from Berlin to lead the London Symphony Orchestra. Few would dispute his assertion. Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano and composition at the Guildhall before going on to create orchestral and operatic works that have won him enormous acclaim and popularity—even among those who traditionally avoid modern classical music. For some he is our greatest composer since Benjamin Britten.
And yet Rattle’s praise doesn’t quite strike the right note. He suggests Adès differs from his peers simply in the “extravagance” of his gifts. But in many respects Adès is unique. He floats above other composers at a rarefied altitude of celebrity, winning in his twenties prizes that normally go to composers in their seventies. He first came to popular attention with his 1995 opera Powder Her Face, his portrayal (with librettist Philip Hensher) of the tragicomic fate of the scandalous Duchess of Argyll. That work is now a fixture in the operatic repertoire.