Thomas Ades, Tevot and the Berlin Philharmonic

Simon Rattle calls Thomas Ades 'an immensely friendly, sociable hermit who will just disappear given the slightest chance.' My kind of guy. Last night's UK premiere of his second full orchestral work Tevot, the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle at the Barbican, thrilled the hall with sound. The term 'tevot' includes in its meaning the notion of the Ark, and Ades speaks of the piece as celebrating planet Earth's role as a Noah's Ark, shipping life through the cosmos. The last half of the piece is composed of polyphonic waves, as though ferrying the planet through planetary seas.

My partner James conceived the outing as a celebration of my recent months. It was an extravagant yet perfect treat. The Berlin Philharmonic gave me my finest musical education. I used to run out to every one of their concerts at the Philharmonie in Berlin when I worked there for two periods in the late 1970s (one such trip features in my first, Berlin-based, novel On Bended Knees). Their final performance last night of Janacek's Sinfonietta, its fanfares of brass utterly thrilling, brought back memories of those events. Under Edo de Waart I first saw how orchestral music had a spatial, almost visible side, notes forming creatures that danced throughout the interior of the hall during the Berlin Phil's performance of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. The sound last night filled the Barbican with that same sense of music dancing, bouncing the performers off their seats in their enthusiasm to join in. Terrific all round.