Obra: Stormen (The Tempest): Overture, Op.109 no.1

“Abandon hope all ye who enter here” could have been the strapline for this brilliantly constructed, brilliantly played concert featuring music by Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and Thomas Adès himself. 

The beginning of Prom 23 was utterly surreal. I found myself confronted by sounds I had never heard before in a concert hall.

A programme based around aquatic themes visited the choppy waters of Scandinavia and the calmer tides of the Mediterranean before plumbing the shallows of an unfathomable recent work.