Thomas Adès Three Berceuses

Three Berceuses arranged for viola and piano from The Exterminating Angel (2018). They are based on some of the opera’s most exquisite and memorable music – the first two drawing on the yearning melancholy duets of the doomed lovers Beatriz and Eduardo, the last a version of Silvia’s eerie berceuse macabre from Act III, in which she cradles a dead lamb, thinking she is rocking her son to sleep (‘It’s very late now, Yoli, it’s bedtime’).

Commissioned for Lawrence Power and underwritten by the VCC; co-commissioned by Verbier Festival, Moritzburg Festival, BBC Radio 3, Aspen Festival, UKARIA Cultural Centre, South Australia, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam

Private premiere of first Berceuse on 19 September 2018 at 22 Mansfield Street, London W1 by Lawrence Power and Huw Watkins; 

World premiere at Verbier Festival on 21 July 2019 by Lawrence Power and George Li; UK premiere BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert on 21 October 2019 at Wigmore Hall by Lawrence Power and Simon Crawford-Phillips; German premiere at Moritzburg Festival by Lawrence Power and Antti Siirala on 9 August 2019. 

Following dates deferred owing to Covid-19 restrictions:

US premiere Aspen Festival August 2020
Australian premiere UKARIA Cultural Centre October 2020
Dutch premiere Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ November 2020