It has been eleven years since Thomas Adès has been seen on the stage of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; a long-awaited return for the roman audience, and a rather hard-earned one as well. The Roman institution was supposed to host the English composer during the 2021 concert season, which was then interrupted due to the pandemic. His return, therefore, was highly expected, as was the uniqueness of the programme, in which Adès chose to pair his Paradiso – in its Italian premiere – with Gustav Holst's Planets.
Celestial Spheres was therefore the title chosen for this concert, which opened with The Planets, the most famous composition dedicated to astronomy in 20th-century music. It is a suite that is more than programme music, fascinating for its orchestration which feels both refined and modern. Adès seemed to enjoy its striking writing and its immediacy and he distinguished himself with vigorous and passionate conducting of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, although sometimes lacking in focus, with a few smears in the woodwinds and some loss of homogeneity. It was better during the last three movements, including Neptune with its wordless chorus, masterfully performed by the Santa Cecilia Chorus.
The heart of the programme was the Italian premiere of Paradiso, the third part of The Dante Project ballet on which Adès worked with choreographer Wayne McGregor. Paradiso is a sonic spiral in continuous crescendo: ten sections, each inspired by the heavens of The Divine Comedy, seamlessly linked in a series of rhythmic progressions set to explode in the final Empyrean. What was surprising in this Paradiso was that its musical component was less ethereal than its name might suggest. On the contrary, the composer outlines a Paradise in the making, in which serious brass explosions alternate with lightning-fast gestures in the violins, which arise like bright, ephemeral fragments.
Dante's ascent towards the Empyrean – the tenth and final heaven – is a journey towards a new knowledge. As such, the understanding of the language and form of Paradise must be built up as one goes along. And as Dante – who initially struggles to understand the music and words of those he meets – showed, also does Adès' music; those lights are only fireworks intended to disappear immediately. The journey is still long.
Thus Paradiso is a composition that leaves no room for rest. It felt like a continuous vortex, which Adès tackled with dynamic and expansive direction. He pushed the orchestra down a path which could not but conclude with the arrival of polyphony, which Dante has exclusively reserved for the highest point of his journey: a choir of female angelic voices, a simple vocalism on diatonic lines, without words. The definitive fulfilment of the celestial sound of this journey into the most perfect harmony.
