Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s

recording of Thomas Adès’ Dante

wins GRAMMY® Award for

Best Orchestral Performance

“[Dante], in its debut recording by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with conductor Gustavo Dudamel, ranks among the most fantastical and kaleidoscopic orchestral works of our time.”

— NPR

“In any new shortlist of great ballet scores by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten, and Bernstein, Dante must newly be included for its musical invention alone. There is not a second in its 88 minutes that doesn’t delight. All of it is unexpected and wanted.”

— Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES (February 5, 2024) – Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s recording of Thomas Adès’ Dante won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Orchestral Performance yesterday at the 66th Annual GRAMMY® Awards.

Recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall in April 2022 during performances conducted by Los Angeles Philharmonic Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, Thomas Adès’ Dante is a ballet score in three acts – “Inferno,” “Purgatorio,” and “Paradiso” – inspired by the alternately chilling and sunlit landscapes of Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia. This concert performance of the ballet score by the Los Angeles Philharmonic is the work’s world-premiere audio recording.

“Dante's legend is at the heart of western culture. My dear friend Thomas Adès, together with the extraordinary musicians of the LA Phil, have captured the essence of this powerful journey through the underworld,” said Gustavo Dudamel. “It is a masterpiece and I am honored by this GRAMMY recognition of our work.”

This is the second year in a row that the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel have been nominated for Best Orchestral Performance. In 2022 they were nominated for “Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 7-9.” This is also the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel’s fourth win for Best Orchestral Performance.

###

About the Composer: Thomas Adès exemplifies a generation of composers who drew upon the long history of symphonic music but rethought those traditional forms with a postmodern eye and sometimes ironic distancing. A prodigious composer, conductor, and pianist, Adès was born in London in 1971. His singular body of work is crowned by three critically acclaimed operas: Powder Her Face (1995), The Tempest (2004), and The Exterminating Angel (2016), as well as the ballet Dante (2019-20). The recipient of numerous awards, including the 2015 Léonie Sonning Music Prize and the 2000 Grawemeyer Award (for his 1997 orchestral work Asyla), Adès was Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival for a decade and has conducted many of the world’s greatest orchestras, including Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2016 he became the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural Artistic Partner; he premiered his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with Kirill Gerstein as soloist with that orchestra in March 2019. He performs worldwide as a pianist, and coaches annually at the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove.

EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

Thomas Adès (1971)

Adès: Dante

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Gustavo Dudamel

Los Angeles Master Chorale

Recorded voices in Purgatorio:

Khazan Gabriel A. Shrem, and the Khazan and congregation of the Great Ades Synagogue, Jerusalem

Wayne McGregor, Choreographer (The Dante Project)

Tacita Dean, Design (The Dante Project)

Side A: Inferno

I. Abandon Hope—

II. The Selfish—stung by wasps

III. The Ferryman

IV. Pavan of the Souls in Limbo—

V. Paolo and Francesca—the endless whirlwind

VI. The Gluttons—in slime

Side B: Inferno

VII. The Suicides—the bleeding trees—

VIII. The Deviants—on burning sand—

IX. The Fortune-tellers—facing both ways

X. The Popes’ Adagio—heads first—

XI. The Hypocrites—in coats of lead

XII. The Thieves—devoured by reptiles

XIII. Satan—in the lake of ice

Side C: Purgatorio

I. Dawn on the Sea of Purgatory—

II. Mount Purgatory—

III. The Valley of Flowers—

IV. The Healing Fire—

V. The Earthly Paradise—

VI. The Heavenly Procession—

VII. The Ascent

Side D: Paradiso

Paradise—Moon—Mercury—Venus—Sun—Mars—Jupiter (The Eagle)—Saturn (The Golden Ladder)—Fixed Stars—Empyrean

Releases Dates: April 21, 2023 - Nonesuch Records

Dante is a co-commission of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Royal Ballet with generous support from the Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund. Inferno was co-commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam.

Available for purchase at the LA Phil store.