UK premiere of «Das Jagdgewehr» (The Hunting Gun) at Aldeburgh Festival 2019 – Reviews
«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