Víkingur and Adès

For decades, Thomas Adès has numbered among Britain’s most respected composers, as well as being an outstanding conductor and pianist. His piano concerto In Seven Days, premiered in 2008, is in seven movements that represent the seven-day creation story recounted in the Book of Genesis. It has garnered unanimous praise and is considered one of the best piano concerti of the 21st century. The critic from the New York Times called it “terrific”, and the critic from the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as “both dramatic and reflective … seems to want to embrace the whole world — a fitting goal for the creation story – and yet it remains winningly approachable.”

This concert is the first in the Iceland Symphony’s three-concert series anchored by artist-in-residence Víkingur Ólafsson and showcasing three new piano concerti by Thomas Adès, John Adams, and Daníel Bjarnason, under the direction of the composers themselves. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear the best new concerti and experience this centuries-old musical form in its 21st-century guise.

Adès is an ardent adherent of the music of Sibelius and has conducted his symphonies and other orchestral works all over the world, including performances with the London Symphony Orchestra. In Iceland he conducts the suite Rakastava (The Lover), together with selections from Sibelius’ incidental music to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, one of the last pieces Sibelius wrote before retiring from his work as a composer.

One of Britain’s leading composers conducts his own music, with Víkingur as soloist.