August 2011
Thomas Larcher: Konzert für Violine, Violoncello
und Orchester (UA, 2011), Auftragswerk der BBC
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov (Dirigent), Viktoria
Mullova (Violine), 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,
19. August 2011
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,
24. August 2011
2011/2012
Thomas Larcher ist Composer in Residence des Konzerthaus
Wien und des Mozarteumorchester Salzburg
Zu den Konzertterminen
Thomas Larchers CDs erscheinen bei ECM Records GmbH, www.ecmrecords.com.
Hörbeispiele
