Online: Thomas Adès's 50th Birthday Concert | London Symphony Orchestra

Recorded in the week that he turns 50, Thomas Adès conducts his piano concerto In Seven Days – a dazzling, multi-layered celebration of the act of creation.

Thomas Adès has been called the natural successor to Britten, and In Seven Days retells the Book of Genesis in music that’s exactly as witty, as intelligent, and as beautiful as you’d expect – especially with the phenomenal Kirill Gerstein as soloist. But with Adès, nothing is ever predictable, and this 50th birthday concert contains more than one masterpiece.

Because there’s a special kind of insight whenever a composer conducts – as if the music is being created afresh – and Adès hasn’t only chosen his own music. For Adès, Sibelius’s symphonies evoke ‘an endless horizon of trees or lakes or pure song’; and alongside Adès’ own vision of creation, Sibelius’s Sixth Symphony will throw a fascinating new light on a living genius and his own continuing journey.

The concert will be broadcast for free on the LSO's YouTube channel and made available on demand following broadcast.

Recorded at LSO St Luke's on Saturday 6 March in covid-secure conditions.