August 2024
Koussevitzky Foundation announces new commission by Thomas Larcher for New York Philharmonic
The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress has awarded commissions for new musical works to eight composers, among them Thomas Larcher who will write a new orchestral piece for the New York Philharmonic.
August 2024
Austrian Premiere of “Love and the Fever. Eight Poems by Miyazawa Kenji for choir and orchestra translated by Roger Pulvers”
March 2024
World Premiere of “Love and the Fever. Eight Poems by Miyazawa Kenji for choir and orchestra translated by Roger Pulvers” in Leipzig
Under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies, whom the work is dedicated to, MDR Sinfonieorchester and MDR Rundfunkchor perform the world premiere of Thomas Larcher’s 55 minutes piece of choir an orchestra in Gewandhaus, Leipzig on March 10th 2024.
December 2023
Praise for “The Living Mountain”
“The Living Mountain” is Norman Lebrecht’s album of the week
“You start out listening with amused tolerance and wind up transfixed by music of hypnotic power driving towards an inescapable destiny”, writes Norman Lebrecht in The Critic and in Slipped Disc. (read the whole article here)
“Consistently engaging music from a composer who says what he needs to say …”
Andrew Mellor in Gramophone 11/2023
One of the best classic albums 2023 for BR-Klassik
“Elementar, archaisch, zugleich zerbrechlich und fein”, writes Meret Forster, “ist die Musik des Tiroler Komponisten Thomas Larcher auf diesem Album, dessen Titel “The Living Mountain” auf die Erinnerungen der schottischen Autorin Nan Shepherd zurückgeht. Lachers gleichnamiges Stück für Sopran und Ensemble mag eine Hommage an die Berge sein, die ihn seit Kindheitstagen umgeben. Dennoch ist es keine Landschaftsbeschreibung oder Programmmusik. Das gilt auch für den intimen Liederzyklus und das energetische Stück “Ouroboros” für Cello und Kammerorchester auf dieser CD. Es bleiben wunderbar rätselhafte, überraschende und existentielle Hörerlebnisse.”
September 2023
“The Living Mountain” is released on ECM records
Austrian composer Thomas Larcher’s new album features premiere recordings of three strongly contrasting works. The Times has hailed Larcher’s music as a world “of haunting landscapes and dreams, stylistically disparate but fused by the composer’s astonishing ear and quizzical attitude to traditional forms”, a description borne out by the compositions here. The Living Mountain, for soprano and ensemble, draws upon the memoir of the Scottish poet and nature writer Nan Shepherd. Unerzählt is an intimate song cycle for baritone and piano, deploying texts of German writer W.G. Sebald. And Ouroboros, named for the serpent of eternity, is a powerful piece for cello and chamber orchestra. Recorded in Munich and Weerberg in 2021 and 2022 and produced by Manfred Eicher, The Living Mountain is the fourth New Series album of Larcher’s compositions.
June 2023
September 2022
Rafael Payare inaugurates the 2022/23 season of Orchèstre Philharmonique de Montréal with Thomas Larcher’s new piece for orchestra Time
The 2022/23 season marks Rafael Payare’s first season as Music Director of OSM. The opening concert will take place on 14.09.2022. The world premiere of Time for orchstra (20′) is accompanied by Mahler’s Resurrection symphony.
February 2022
A new CD with music by Thomas Larcher is being released by Tonkünstler Orchestra
A CD with Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No. 1 “Alle Tage” and his violin concerto performed by Hannu Lintu and Pierre Bleuse (conductors), Adrian Eröd (baritone) and Benjamin Beilman (violin), and the Tonkunstler Orchestra is being released in February 2022 alongside with two live performances of the concerto for violin and orchestra in Musikverein Wien.
November 2021
A new CD with music by Thomas Larcher is being released by Ondine
Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No. 2 “Kenotaph” and “Die Nacht der Verlorenen” for baritone and ensemble performed by Hannu Lintu (conductor), Andrè Schuen baritone), and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra appears on Ondine Records (ODE1393-2).
September 2021
World premiere of Thomas Larcher’s “Nucleus” for viola, cello and double bass at West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival on 25.09.2021
September 2021
Symphony No. 3 “A Line Above the Sky” in Amsterdam
The third symphony is being played at Zadertag Matinee and broadcasted by NPO radio 4 on Saturday, 25.09.2021, and can he relistened to: https://www.nporadio4.nl/uitzendingen/ntr-zaterdagmatinee/4acca1d5-d732-4850-990e-b1fc1d84d802/2021-09-25-ntr-zaterdagmatinee-lewis-en-canellakis-gevecht-met-de-elementen
September 2021
Symphony No. 3 “A Line Above the Sky” broadcasted by Austrian radio station Ö1
The Austrian premiere of Symphony No. 3 at Bregenz festival on 22th August 2021 can be reheared on Austrian radio station Oesterreich 1 on September 2nd 2021.
Ö1, 2.9. 2021, 19:30 Das Ö1-Konzert – Bregenzer Festspiele 2021
Symphonieorchester Vorarlberg, conductor: Leo McFall; Pawel Zalejski, violine; Mathias Johansen, violoncello; Viola Wilmsen, oboe, Heidrun Wirth-Methler, bassoon. Ludwig van Beethoven: Ouvertüre zu “Egmont” op. 84 Joseph Haydn: Sinfonia concertante B-Dur Hob. I/105 Thomas Larcher: Symphonie No. 3, “A Line Above the Sky” (Austrian premiere) (recorded on 22th August in Festspielhaus Bregenz in 5.1 Surround Sound). Presentation: Stefan Höfel
June 2021
Thomas Larcher is awarded the Tyrolean state prize for art
The “Tiroler Landespreis für Kunst” is the highest award of the state of Tyrol in the field of art and culture and is endowed with 14.000 Euro. The official ceremony will take place in autumn.
June 2021
The second piano concerto on YouTube
The world premiere with Kirill Gerstein, Karina Canellakis, and the Radio Filharmonish Orkest live from Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is now available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jul86UktmKs
May 2021
Thomas Larcher’s 3rd Symphony in Deutschlandfunk
The world premiere of A Line above the Sky is being broadcasted in Deutschlandfunk on 24.05.2021. Listen to it here.
May 2021
World premiere of Thomas Larcher’s second piano concerto in Amsterdam
Thomas Larcher’s Piano Concerto for piano and orchestra (2020–21) is being premiered by Kirill Gerstein and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest under Karina Canellakis’ direction in Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on 22.05.2021. The concert is being broadcasted live by Netherlands Radio 4 and can be reheard here.
Maartje Stokkers in de Volkskrant rated the concert 5 stars:
“Nog een keer alsjeblieft, denk je na het horen van Thomas Larchers nieuwste pianoconcert
Het stuk overweldigt door de veelheid aan geluiden, kleuren en sferen, bleek zaterdag in het Concertgebouw …”
April 2021
“Die Nacht der Verlorenen” in Finish television
The Finish RSO under conductor Hannu Lintu, and baritone Andrè Schuen performing “Die Nacht der Verlorenen” live in Finland for Hannu Lintu’s new album for Ondine Records with music by Thomas Larcher. The performance can be reheard here.
February 2021
Brno Philharmonic premieres Symphony No 3 ” A Line above the Sky”
Originally sceduled to be premiered in May 2020 by Hannu Lintu and the Radio Filharmonish Orkest in Amsterdam, Symphony No 3 “A Line above the Sky” is now premiered by Brno Philharmonic and its chief conductor Dennis Russell Davies in czech radio on 27.02.2021, 12:05.
November 2020
Richard Morrison in The Times about “Ouroboros”: “It’s a masterpiece.”
“[…] Ouroboros was written by the Austrian composer Thomas Larcher, who had a big hit at the Aldeburgh Festival last year with his psychologically disturbing opera The Hunting Gun. This work is a cello concerto like no other.
Its title refers to the Ancient Egyptian (and later Greek) symbol depicting a snake biting its own tale. For thousands of years that has been interpreted as a metaphor for the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, but if that was in Larcher’s mind it is a life cycle that mixes eruptions of violence with profound melancholy. The cellist (here the LPO’s superb principal, Kristina Blaumane) is less conventional concerto soloist than leader of a feral pack, careering from the highest harmonics to the lowest growls and often accompanied by a piano that is sometimes played inside-out. In 20 minutes there isn’t a single false step. It’s a masterpiece. […]” Richard Morrison, The Times, 5.11.2020
Read the whole review here.
October 2020
“Ouroboros” live on BBC Radio 3
Listen here to Thomas Larcher’s cello concerto performed by Thierry Fischer and LPO in London’s Royal Festival Hall
July 2020
Thomas Larcher’s music now on YouTube
As there are currently no events possible due to COVID-19, you might enjoy listening to performances from the past – such as Symphony No.2 ‘Kenotaph’.
More tracks available on Thomas Larcher’s official YouTube channel.
June 2020
Thomas Larcher is Wigmore Hall’s Composer in Residence 2020/21
Thomas Larcher returns to Wigmore Hall as composer in residence for the upcoming season. John Gilhooly first introduced Larcher to Wigmore audiences in 2011, and is now delighted to invite him back for a season-long focus. Learn more about the programme here.
*postponed due to Corona crisis*
March 2020
* cancelled due to Corona crisis * || “The Hunting Gun” in Amsterdam
Dutch National Opera presents Thomas Larcher’s first opera “Das Jagdgewehr”
February 2020
Thomas Larcher is announced composer in residence at Wigmore Hall in 2020/21!
January 2020
“Ouroboros” in Frankfurt, Germany with Alisa Weilerstein and Frankfurt Radio Symphony
December 2019
Hannu Lintu conducts Thomas Larcher “Alle Tage. Symphony for baritone and orchestra”
Listen to the live performance by Tonkuenstler Orchestra in the Vienna Musikverein, 1.12.2019, here (stream available for 7 days only)
November 2019
Now on YouTube … “Poems. 12 pieces for pianists and ohter children” (1975–2010)
Buy it now on www.schott-music.com (13,99 €)
October 2019
Thomas Larcher is awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize 2019
The Grand Austrian State Prize (German: Großer Österreichischer Staatspreis) is a decoration given annually by Austria to an artist for exceptional work. The ceremony was held in Vienna on October 10th 2019. The prize is endowed with 30 000 €.
August 2019
Thomas Larcher will be composer in residence at Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam during the season 2019/2020
The upcoming season at the Concertgebouw will feature concerts with already existing pieces of Thomas Larcher such as “Poems. 12 pieces for pianists and other children” or “Mumien” for violoncello and piano and “A Padmore Cycle” for tenor and orchestra aswell as new pieces such as a composition for ASKO | Schönberg for which he has worked with Dutch photographer Awoiska van der Molen and Symphony No. 3, which will be premiered by Hannu Lintu and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest at the Mahler Festival in May 2020.
June 2019
UK premiere of “Das Jagdgewehr” (“The Hunting Gun”) at Aldeburgh Festival 2019
(C) Stephen Cummiskey
“How pathetic human actions are! What is this darkness, this snake, that we all have inside us? These were the gloomy thoughts that rang round our ears as Thomas Larcher’s first opera, The Hunting Gun, the opening attraction of the 72nd Aldeburgh Festival, moved towards its close. (…) You had to be in a coma not to respond to the beauty and joyful ingenuity of the Austrian composer’s music. (…) At first glance this opera might well be a masterpiece.”
Star rating: *****
Geoff Brown, The Times, 10.06.2019
~
“With a few deep sighs and a rattle of stick on wood, Thomas Larcher’s The Hunting Gun sidles into life like a beast waking from slumber. It’s a bold start to a breathtaking piece – unquestionably one of the outstanding events in a crowded summer season – which, nearly two hours later, in similar vein, sinks back into oblivion. (…)
Larcher should be better known to a wider public. His music has the quirky richness of a coat made not only of rainbow colours, but of every conceivable fabric: a sonic equivalent of feathers, velvet, net, silk, brushed steel, burlap, lace. Out of a jangle of steel pans, tubular bells and thunder sheets, a fragment of radiant chorale or counterpoint might emerge. Much of the solo vocal writing has the power of song while some (…) becomes part of the orchestral texture. (…)”
Star rating: *****
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 15.06.2019
~
“The rumour machine whispered that this would be something special and different – a new opera by the Austrian composer Thomas Larcher, first performed at last summer’s Bregenz Festival, that contained a world of sensual beauty that contemporary music is commonly thought to lack. And so it proved. (…)
… this new opera by Thomas Larcher has a rare beauty and addictive charm”
Star rating: ****
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, 8.6.2019
~
“At Snape Maltings Concert Hall, the UK premiere of Thomas Larcher’s first opera does Benjamin Britten proud (…)
Larcher’s mesmerising music (…) communicates all the anguish that the characters strive to keep under wraps. There are violent eruptions, biting dissonances and experimental rumbles. But there is also a Beethovenian string quartet, a Bach-inspired chorale and music of luminous beauty.”
Star rating: ****
Hannah Nepilova, Financial Times, 10.06.2019
~
“… The music is both precise and elusive, and the writing for the three percussionists and a significant multi-tasking role for piano is so meticulously scored and executed that at first it sounds artificial. The woodwind-writing is particularly poetic, and Larcher moves easily from creating echoes of the Austro-German masters – nods to Bach, Schubert, Schumann or Bruckner drift in without a shred of attention-grabbing self-consciousness – to a mesmerising deployment of tonality and scraps of lyricism. There is also a big role for accordion, an instrument for which Larcher writes with eerie imagination. This combination of tonal content and sheer beauty has great clarity, and along with Larcher’s insolently instinctive manipulation of memory, the accumulative effect is breathtaking. (…)”
Star rating: ****
Peter Reede, Classical Source, 7.6.2019
June 2019
World premiere of “Movement for solo piano” at Aldeburgh Festival 2019
Pauls Lewis premieres the new work for solo piano at Snape Maltings Condert Hall on 8th of June 2019. Other concerts in Aldeburgh festival 2019 include the UK premiere of the opera “Das Jagdgewehr” aswell as all four string quartets, “Ouroboros”, “Red and Green”, “A Padmore Cycle” for tenor and piano and Thomas Larcher playing himself “Poems”, Schubert and Kurtág’s arrangements of Bach chorals together with Paul Lewis.
April 2019
US premiere of Symphony No. 2 “Kenotaph”
“Conducted by Semyon Bychkov (…), its visceral intensity was its strongest quality. Whole stretches felt like teeming, sorrowful reflections of the human tragedy that inspired Mr. Larcher. It’s scored for a huge orchestra with an array of makeshift percussion
instruments, including thunder sheets and oil barrels. Yet these myriad sounds are folded subtly into the orchestral textures. From the
opening of the first movement, which begins with a thwacked chord that sets off fidgety riffs, the music is continually kinetic and shifting. Mr. Larcher’s ear for captivating sonorities and his sheer imagination kept pulling me in. Cluster chords are dense and hazy, yet pungent with tension. The music will break into a fleeting lyrical passage only to be pummeled down by an onslaught of percussion. The pensive Adagio movement comes closest to being a cogent entity, which made it all the more affecting. Echoes of Baroque-style chorales were intricately folded into the opening of the final movement, with tonal harmonies that splinter and turn vaporous.” Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, April 25, 2019
~
“Here he succeeds brilliantly with reinvented chorales, coherent reprises, and gestural echoes of the colorful scores of Stravinsky and Messiaen. The work also possesses some of the “practical music performing a social function” philosophy of a Britten or a Shostakovich. And although he denies any programmatic quality to the music, it’s hard not to hear at times the visceral sounds of sea and wind, while the appearance at one point of a dismissive Austrian ländler folk-dance tune smacks of a Europe that is increasingly turning its back on this humanitarian crisis. (…)
An interesting evening, and one that showcased a pair of powerful Viennese works, albeit written 130 years apart. At this point in time, I found Larcher’s poignant monument to the estimated 22,000 drowned at sea the more affecting.” Clive Paget, Musical America, April 26, 2019
~
“For a first-time listener, this powerful, lugubrious score did bring forward real images: the agitated or just falsely becalmed waters of the sea, the people’s anger and the despair. (…) Composed for a large orchestra, this captivating music, pendulating between bursts of energy and moments of stasis, is a testimony to Larcher’s remarkable talent as an orchestrator.” Edward Sava-Segal, Bachtrack, April 26, 2019
~
“The first half of the concert was given over to the United States premiere of the Austrian composer Thomas Larcher’s visceral Symphony No. 2: Kenotaph….musically Kenotaph should be regarded as one of the New York Philharmonic’s most exciting premieres of recent memory (…)” Brad Ross, Oberon’s Grove, April 30, 2019
~
“Mr. Larcher is perhaps Austria’s most renowned composer, and for good reason. He is meticulous, imaginative, he has the orchestral colors of a Tintoretto and the musical architecture of a Christopher Wren. More essential, his “Cenotaph” symphony has the kind of infinite energy which allows one to almost visualize the energy of a solar system or two. (…) This Second Symphony was not music’s usual metaphor for energy. It was energy itself.” Harry Rolnick, ConcertoNet.com
~
“Semyon Bychkov led a program consisting of two substantial symphonies–Thomas Larcher’s No. 2, Kenotaph, and Johannes Brahms’s No. 4—that had much in common: a tragic character, and truly “symphonic” ambitions when it came to orchestral sonorities and breadth of expression. Not to mention the four-movement form of Haydn and Beethoven—sonata-allegro, slow movement, scherzo, finale—which was considered old-fashioned when Brahms took it up for the fourth and last time in 1884, never mind Larcher in 2015. The goal was to put stimulating new wine in that old bottle, and we now know that Brahms succeeded four times over. And Wednesday’s U.S. premiere of Larcher’s harrowing symphony showed it can still be done.” David Wright, The New York Classic Review
December 2018
Thomas Larcher announced Artist in Residence together with tenor Mark Padmore and soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan at Aldeburgh Festival 2019
Composer Thomas Larcher’s first opera The Hunting Gun has its UK premiere, and Paul Lewis plays the world premiere of an Aldeburgh Festival commission. There are performances of Ouroboros by cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the CBSO, Red and Green by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the composer’s four string quartets.
Tenor Mark Padmore brings a richer experience to song and opera in a series of Poetry and Music events with Dr Kate Kennedy, followed by performances with Roderick Williams, Andrew West and Julius Drake.
Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan curates concerts in the final four days, performing with the Ludwig Orchestra from the Netherlands. She returns to one of her first major operatic roles, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, but this time as conductor rather than singer. Other works Hannigan will conducts and sing include Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Gershwin’s Suite from Girl Crazy and Haydn’s Symphony No.49.
Find out more about the Artists in Residence and next year’s festival here
November 2018
Thomas Larcher is awarded the Ernst Krenek Prize (10 000 €) of the City of Vienna
Learn more here
October 2018
Thomas Larcher receives „Le Prix de Composition Musicale“ (75 000 €) of Fondation Prince Pierre (Monaco) for Symphony No. 2 “Kenotaph” (2016)
Learn more here
September 2018
The Dutch premiere of piano music by Thomas Larcher.
August 2018
“The Hunting Gun” reviews by international press
in English f.ex. by Stephen Pritchard for The Guardian, by Sarah Batchelet for bachtrack, by Clare Colvin for EXPRESS, by Rebecca Schmid for Financial Times
August 2018
The world premiere of Thomas Larcher’s first opera “Das Jagdgewehr” for Bregenz Festival on 15.08.2018 is broadcasted on TV:
ORF III 
| Sunday 19.08.2018 | 23:10 to 00:50
watch it (or watch it later) here
March 2018
World premiere of “Chiasma” for orchestra (2017)
To celebrate the inauguration of the new Gewandhaus conductor Andris Nelsons and the 275th anniversary of the orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester will perform the world premiere of Thomas Larcher’s new orchestral work Chiasma in Leipzig on 15 March.
The work was commissioned by the Gewandhausorchester especially for this occasion. Larcher challenged himself to compose a 10 minute piece containing the development of an entire world, which he describes as a ‘compressed microsymphony’. Within this ‘compressed microsymphony’, Larcher shows a world with tenderness, beauty, brutality and futility.
February 2018
Save the date … tickets available here
November 2017
“Der Tod und das Mädchen” Tanzstück by Stephan Thoss at Nationaltheater Mannheim, Germany.
With music by Franz Schubert, Ezio Bosso, Philip Glass and Thomas Larcher
Premiere 11.11.2017, Opernhaus Mannheim, further performances: 18.11./29.11./08.12./26.12.2017
November 2017
Review of Symphony No.2 “Kenotaph” in Munich with Semyon Bychkov and Munich Philharmonic in Sueddeutsche Zeitung
Klaus Kalchschmid: Wut und Trauer. Die Philharmoniker unter Semyon Bychkov
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6. 11.2017) (available in German only)
“Wer heute ein Werk für großes Orchester “Symphonie” nennt, meint das entweder ironisch oder weiß genau, was er tut. Thomas Larchers 2. Symphonie, ursprünglich als “Konzert für Orchester” geplant und 2016 mit den Wiener Philharmonikern unter Semyon Bychkov uraufgeführte, stand jetzt bei den Münchner Philharmonikern im Gasteig auf dem Programm. Das Warten auf das bereits für ein Konzert im vergangenen Juni angekündigte Stück – und wieder mit Bychkov am Pult – hatte sich gelohnt: eine veritable viersätzige, fast eine Dreiviertelstunde lange Symphonie ist es, mit Themen wie für einen Sonatenhauptsatz, dezidierten Rhythmen, viel Tonalität, aber auch raffiniert geschärfter Dissonanz und einem Klangfarbenreichtum, der schon beim ersten Hören unmittelbar nachvollziehbar ist.”
Read more
September 2017
German and dutch premiere of Symphony No. 2 “Kenotaph”
watch ARTE Concert live stream here (german premiere)
August 2017
UK premiere of “Nocturne – Insomnia” at BBC Proms
with Robin Ticciati and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
audio and video available here
June 2017
A portrait of Thomas Larcher in Austrian radio programme Oe1:
Zeit-Ton, “Schillernd vielfältige Musik” | 27 06 2017, 23:03 |
June 2017
World premiere of “A Padmore Cycle for tenor and piano trio” (2010–2011/2017)
20.06.2017 | Konzerthaus | Vienna, Austria
Mark Padmore (tenor), Wiener Klaviertrio (David McCarroll, Matthias Gredler, Stefan Mendl)
December 2016
Video of the UK premiere of Symphony No. 2 “Kenotaph” now available …
September 2016
“Ouroboros” in Norway
August 2016
UK premiere “Kenotaph” – concert reviews
Michael Church: Prom 57 (…) Thomas Larcher’s “Cenotaph” makes old symphonic forms newly relevant
(The Independent, 1.9.2016)
“… His music is always instinctive and emotional, yet it possesses a watchmaker’s precision; its stock-in-trade includes biting dissonances, cinematic cross-cuts, and startling shifts in volume, timbre, and tone. What is quintessentially classical is the care and clarity with which he lays out each work’s structure.
In this new work all those qualities are there in spades. Each of its four movements is fastidiously shaped, and in each there are outbursts of anarchically dissonant fury. But under Semyon Bychkov’s baton the BBC Symphony Orchestra delivered a superbly detailed performance, with the sudden turns into pastiche-Mahler and pastiche-Bach opening like wondrous flowers in a parched terrain …”
Tim Ashley: BBCSO/Bychkov review – faultless and furious Larcher premiere
(The Guardian, 29.8.2016)
“Thomas Larcher’s formidable symphony commemorating refugees drowned in the Mediterranean builds to a climax of tremendous irony and power. (…)
It’s a formidable score, angry yet lyrical, and rooted in the mainstream symphonic tradition, though it also pushes at the boundaries of conventional structure. Larcher argues that his music is not programmatic – that it does not “convey messages, but asks questions”. But it’s difficult not to hear the heaving of a treacherous sea beneath the formal crisis of the opening movement, or the intimation of dangerously becalmed waters in the grieving adagio. The sonorities are by turns lucid and brutal, and the climax comes with a battering scherzo that furiously demands answers, only to be greeted with a banal ländler that reeks of indifference and contempt. It’s a moment of tremendous irony and power. You couldn’t fault the performance …”
Anna Picard: Prom 57: BBCSO/ Bychkov at the Royal Albert Hall
(The Times, 28.08.2016)
“The sound worlds in this ostensibly straightforward three-work concert were complementary, and Larcher’s new symphony exquisite.
Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No 2, Cenotaph, opens with a violent slap of sound. Smeared and blurred strings quickly cool the crimson cheek, interrupted by cauterised fanfares, fragmented hymns, sweet laments for solo violin and clarinet, a cobalt swell of sound from harp, celesta, vibraphone and prepared piano. In Semyon Bychkov’s taut performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the UK premiere, there was little doubt that Cenotaph was being treated as an important, maybe great, new work — about time too, given the parochial quality of some of this year’s new works.
scherzo …”
August 2016
New CD with “Poems for Pianists and other children” out now …:
Lars Vogt: For Children – Thomas Larcher – Robert Schumann – Bela Bartók
June 2016
Concert review by Jens F. Laurson in Forbes
The Rebirth of Contemporary Classical Music? The Vienna Philharmonic Plays Larcher.
Concert review (available in German only) by Wilhelm Sinkovicz in Die Presse
“Kenotaph: Eine neue Symphonie als Mahnmal. Thomas Larchers Zweite, “Kenotaph” genannt, ist ein außerordentlicher Wurf. Die Wiener Philharmoniker spielten sie zum 200-Jahr-Jubiläum der Nationalbank.”
June 2016
World premiere of Symphony No. 2 “Kenotaph” with Vienna Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov in the Viennese Musikverein
Live broadcasted by OE1 on Sunday, 5.6.2016; online available for 7 days: http://oe1.orf.at/programm/438805
February/March 2016
Tim Plegge’s ballet “Kaspar Hauser” with sections of Thomas Larcher’s “Böse Zellen” premiered in Wiesbaden and Darmstadt
For more information about the piece and all upcoming performances:
http://www.staatstheater-wiesbaden.de/ballett/premieren/kaspar-hauser/
February 2016
“Ouroboros” for cello and orchestra is premiered in Amsterdam by Jean-Guihen Queras and Amsterdam Sinfonietta
January 2016
Thomas Larcher is awarded the Austrian Kunstpreis for Music 2015
November 2015
Thomas Larcher’s forth string quartet “lucid dreams” is premiered in Grenoble, France, by Belcea Quartet who commissioned the piece for their 20th anniversary season
January 2015
Thomas Larcher is awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2014–2015 Elise L. Stoeger Prize has been awarded to Austrian composer Thomas Larcher. The Stoeger Prize, a $25,000 cash award and the largest of its kind, is given every two years in recognition of significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition.
Chamber Music Society Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han commented on the announcement: “We are thrilled to present the 2014–2015 Stoeger Prize to Thomas Larcher. As a composer of great achievement on canvasses both large and small, he merits specific recognition for his work in the highly concentrated art form of chamber music, for which his bountiful sonic imagination is tremendously well suited. We find his music deeply communicative yet uncompromising, essential qualities for the ongoing vitality of the chamber music tradition, so it is with great pleasure that we add his name to the already luminous roster of Stoeger Prize recipients.”
Thomas Larcher responds: “All I have learned in music I learned by writing and playing chamber music: listening, breathing, balancing, living and working in and for a community. Chamber Music has always been the heart of music making. It comprises all the facets that music can contain and express, and has always been a field where new ideas have been explored, and where composers have opened doors which were crucial for them. I am very touched and honoured that the Chamber Music Society considers my work to be a part of this great tradition.”
The Chamber Music Society will present Larcher’s Mumien for Cello and Piano during the 2015–2016 season of its New Music. Previously, his composition Kraken for Piano, Violin, and Cello, was performed on the series in February 2014.
September 2014
Working …
In the last few months Thomas Larcher has been working on commissions for several pieces due in the next seasons.
A new work for baritone and orchestra (commissioned by Zaterdagmatinee Amsterdam, NSO Washington and Gewandhaus Leipzig) is underway. It will be premiered on April 11, 2015 at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw by Matthias Goerne (baritone), the Radio Filharmonish Orkest and Jaap van Zweden.
The next major project will be the “Concerto for Orchestra”, commissioned by the Austrian National Bank on behalf of its second centennial. The premiere will be in June 2016 at the Vienna Musikverein featuring the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Semyon Bychkov.
The 15/16 season will also see premieres of two pieces which will bring the composer back to the sources of his composing: a string quartet initiated by the Belcea quartet (premiere: December 2, 2015 in Grenoble) and a work for cello and chamber orchestra, initiated and commissioned by Amsterdam Sinfonietta with co-commissioners Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and Munich Chamber Orchestra. The concerto will be premiered in Amsterdam on February 8, 2016.
May 2014
It’s been more than a month since “What Becomes” has been released. Several fantastic reviews have come up so far, among them in The Independet, The New York Times Classical Playlist, The San Francisco Examiner, BBC Music Magazine, Fono Forum.
“A Padmore Cycle, which he wrote for the elegant and eloquent tenor Mark Padmore, is a haunting, enigmatic work, with a taste for gnomic melodies, as are the other tracks, for piano.” | Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times Playlist, 19.03.2014
“The result is that the experience of listening to this new album is just as intense as that of listening to the earlier Madhares release. In both cases Larcher’s music draws the listening mind into sharply defined focal points, and the only real difference is the scale of the resources. […]
In writing about Red and Green, I concluded by hoping for further exposure to Larcher’s work “in the foreseeable future.” I ended up waiting three years. As a result of listening to What Becomes, I am likely to be far less patient over when my next opportunity will arise.” | Stephen Smoliar, The San Francisco Examiner, 16.04.2014
“Highly recommended for those keen to explore.” | Robert Hugill, Planethugill.com, 22.04.2014)
“So wird der Albumtitel What Becomes im besten Sinne nachvollziehbar. Hier ringt ein Pianist und Komponist kreativ und abseits ästhetischer Dogmen mit seinem Instrument: Mag es ihn einst emotional abgestoßen haben, nun kehrt er desto zwingender zurück, allein und gemeinsam mit anderen Musikern.” | Meret Forster, BR-Klassik, Leporello CD-Tipp, 30.04.2014
“This is very striking music. We do indeed feel an alternative form of being proposed, one dominated and defined by solitary internal matters and concerns. What are we to make of it? Perhaps the Greeks who came to this kind of art to purge or at least make peace with their fears could tell us. That Larcher should call this album What Becomes suggests that Smart Dust, Poems, and the title work have led us to A Padmore Cycle. Have become it.” | Bob Neill, Positive Feedback, Issue 72 March/April 2014
“Setting texts by Hans Aschenwald and Alois Hotschnig, A Padmore Cycle offers a aphoristic if not fragmentary trip back into the mountains and valleys that are so familiar from Schubert, Brahms and Mahler’s Lieder. Larcher echoes their musical and literary tropes, though everything is placed at an eerie distance, due, according to one of Aschenwald’s poems, to the ‘hunger for a homeland that no longer is one’.” | Gavin Plumley, entartetemusik.blogspot.co.at, 31.03.2014
“Dem Zuhörer verlangen diese enigmatischen Gedichte ein Höchstmaß an Konzentration ab. Wer sich aber darauf einlässt, wird vielfach belohnt. Auch die von Tamara Stefanovich gespielten Werke für Klavier […] sind von äußerster Subtilität und Fragilität und ergänzen den Gedichtzyklus optimal.” | Das Opernglas 05/2014
“The songs make full use of Padmore’s exceptional interpretative talents. His initial outburst belies the prevailing fragility of a transfixing cycle.” | Christopher Dingle, BBC Music Magazine, June 2014
“Smart Dust, in which the rubber wedges and the gaffa-tape applied to the strings enable startling juxtapositions of quiet tones with kinetic, percussive flourishes. Elsewhere, the unprepared approach to the suites Poems […] and What Becomes reveal a contemplative sensibility.” | The Independent, 05.04.2014
April 2014
Thomas Larcher’s new CD “What Becomes” released on 7th April 2014
Thomas Larcher: What Becomes
harmonia mundi HMU 907604
Smart Dust; Poems; What Becomes; A Padmore Cycle
Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Mark Padmore (tenor), Thomas Larcher (piano)
Thomas Larcher’s fourth and most recent recording What Becomes comprises three works for piano: Smart Dust (2005), Poems (2005–2010) and What Becomes (2009), as well as Larcher’s 20-minute song cycle, A Padmore Cycle, composed for tenor and piano. Set to short poems by Hans Aschenwald and Alois Hotschnig, Mark Padmore gave the UK première of A Padmore Cycle in 2011, and will give the world première of the orchestral version in London this November with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner.
The three pieces for piano, performed on this recording by Tamara Stefanovich, comprise a selection of works composed to elicit from the piano new sounds and means of expression that would turn it into a “different instrument”. In Smart Dust, composed for a piano completely prepared with rubber wedges and gaffer tape, which was premièred at the 2005 Lucerne Festival, Larcher wanted to return to the piano a sound with a sense of urgency. In contrast, when composing Poems, he was able to go back to the piano and rediscover its natural sound. Between these two works, What Becomes was written for Leif Ove Andsnes who premiered the piece accompanied by video projections by Robin Rhode in New York, prior to taking it on tour.
“Short, elliptical verses reveal hidden depths as Padmore wrenches every ounce of melancholy ardour, or sudden whispered ferocity, out of their syllables. Larcher, playing the equally elaborate piano parts, adds another line of provocative counterpoint.” | The Times, November 16 11
“… a haunting, enigmatic work, with a taste for gnomic melodies …” | Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times, March 19 14
What Becomes on the “Classical Playlist” of The New York Times: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
Thomas Larcher: What Becomes is available from store.harmoniamundi.com from April 7 14
February 2014
“Lightning strikes at Chamber Music Society’s modernist program” – On www.newyorkclassicalreview.com George Grella reviews the concert on February 13th at Lincoln Center, New York with Gloria Chien (piano), Nicolas Dautricourt (violin) and Nicholas Canellakis (cello) performing Thomas Larcher’s “Kraken” (1994–97)
“[…] The lightning came after intermission, as Dautricourt ripped into the virtuosic, intense solo opening of Thomas Larcher’s tremendous 1997 composition Kraken for Piano, Violin and Cello. The flashes in the sky paled in comparison to the brilliance of Larcher’s combination of structural simplicity and startlingly imaginative lines.
Laid across an almost-visible grid of measures that holds the piece together, the music explodes with freedom and variety. Answering the violin was a mesmerizing, almost mechanistic series of quarter notes that Chien played on the piano, the precision of rhythm and tempo conveying a surreal sense of control.
The music was joined in the third of five sections by Canellakis: the strings playing pianissimo over a clearly outlined pulse. Their phrase lengths are at odds, and off-kilter accents simulate a shifting sense of complex rhythms, while the piano adds short, punchy phrases on muted strings.
The result is a thrilling aural illusion greater than the sum of its parts, an example of craft that students will likely be studying for years to come. A spartan ballad follows, then the arch form of Kraken closes with the trio playing an emotionally tense variation of the opening violin solo, rounding off a superior performance.[…]”
Read the whole review at http://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2014/02/lightning-strikes-at-chamber-music-societys-modernist-program/#sthash.wWijZw8E.dpuf
December 2013
Awards and excellent reviews for new “CD Hanns Eisler: Ernste Gesänger. Lieder with piano”
In September 2013, a new CD was released on harmonia mundi featuring Thomas Larcher as pianist together with baritone Matthias Goerne and Ensemble Resonanz. The recording of “Ernste Gesänge“, assorted songs and the Sonata No 1 by Hanns Eisler received prestigious awards and rave reviews:
* DIAPASON D’OR (édition de novembre 2013)
* CHOC de Classica (octobre 2013)
* DIAMANT d’Opéra Magazine (novembre 2013)
“Die wichtigste CD dieses Jahres.” | Berliner Zeitung (Peter Uehling), 27.09.2013
“It is a fascinating and hugely rewarding disc.” | The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 26.09.2013
“Worte leuchten, Musiklinien verweben sich, das Ensemble Resonanz und Goerne sind ideale Partner. Ebenso der Pianist und Komponist Thomas Larcher. Der ist in den Klavierliedern nicht nur Begleiter, sondern aktiver Gestalter, auch in der packend gespielte Klaviersonate op. 1, die Eisler seinem Lehrer Arnold Schönberg gewidmet hat.“ | Die Welt (Manuel Brug), 24.11.2013
“Interprète exceptionnel du lied allemand, confident favori de Schubert dont il a enregistré sept disques magnifiques pour le même éditeur, Matthias Goerne sculpte les mots avec le soin d’un orfèvre et galbe la ligne mélodique avec l’intensité du grand chanteur d’opéra qu’il est aussi. Le pianiste Thomas Larcher et l’Ensemble Resonanz vibrent au même diapason de cette musique qui mérite vraiment d’être entendue.“ | Les Echos (Philippe Venturini), 21.11.2013
“The German baritone Matthias Goerne articulates Eisler’s anguish with crisp diction couched in a velveteen musicality. More even than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who took up these songs half a century ago, Goerne goes to the heart of pain without a trace of pity and with sudden flashes of wit. He turns wilder and more dramatic in a set of Bertolt Brecht songs for voice and piano, accompanied by Thomas Larcher, who also performs Eisler’s earliest work, a 1923 piano sonata dedicated to Schoenberg. The sound is exemplary and the cover image arresting; (…) this is a near-perfect record.” | Sinfini Music (Norman Lebrecht), 16.09.2013
“Matthias Goerne offers an excellent new disc of songs by Hanns Eisler. After Kaufmann and Verdi’s operatic largesse, Goerne and Eisler prove you can also thrillingly expressive wielding a delicate whisper, a pungent shout, and irony’s stiletto heel.” | The Times (Geoff Brown), 19.09.2013
“Bravo voor de onopgeprikte Goerne: alsof het makkelijke deuntjes zijn, zo moeiteloos rollen de liederen uit zijn keel.” | Volkskrant (Guido van Oorschot), 19.09.2013
