August 18 11, Royal Albert Hall, London, BBC Proms

Thomas Larcher: Concerto for violin, cello and orchestra (WP, 2011)
work commissioned by the BBC
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov, conductor
Viktoria Mullova, violin
Matthew Barley, violincello

To say that the concerto is easy on the ear would be too simplistic, but Larcher unequivocally knows how to beguile and stimulate the senses through his personal interpretation of conventional harmony and in the colours that he evokes.
He does not shrink from exploiting the violin and cello, either from the point of view of range or in expressive potential, but he does it idiomatically rather than trying to make them do things for which the instruments were never intended. The accompanying texture is kaleidoscopic and iridescent, with a fair-sized orchestra supplemented by a quartet of electric zither, accordion, percussion and prepared piano, the last of which Larcher played himself.
The sounds are captivating, the contrasts vigorous. The first movement, which starts in a slow, almost ritualistic way, pits pools of stillness against passages of ferocious rhythmic activity, with the quartet providing pungent, scintillating commentary and background both for the soloists and for the orchestra, here the BBC Scottish Symphony under Ilan Volkov. The second movement, in which Larcher proves that there is still plenty of music to be written in C major, is hauntingly reflective, opening up wonderful, wide vistas of sound that are tranquil and meditative while continuing to explore in a lucid way the timbres of the particular forces he has marshalled.
Geoffrey Norris, www.telegraph.co.uk, August 19 11

Calm, alert and unhurried, Thomas Larcher's Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra is a space in which to breathe and listen. Nothing is quite as you might expect it to be.
Faint rustlings catch the ear: the rub of a palm on the skin of a drum, the lazy grin of an accordion, the mosquito whine of a bow drawn across metal. Here, where solo violin and cello imitate viols in their elegaic, dove-tailed figures, where lush, dewy choirs of woodwind and brass shimmer and bloom, Larcher has created a unique landscape. Electric zither, accordion, percussion and prepared piano offer a frame within a frame for the violin and cello. Romantic in the radiance of its tutti sections, Baroque in its collegial broken consort and the grave simplicity of the cadences that link its two movements, the work affords no grandstanding, no pyrotechnics: it is chamber music on a symphonic scale.
Anna Picard über „Konzert für Violine, Violoncello und Orchester“, www.independent.co.uk, August 24 2011

Season 2011/2012

Thomas Larcher is Composer in Residence at the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and the Konzerthaus Wien
Calendar

Thomas Larcher’s CDs can be obtained from www.ecmrecords.com.