On www.newyorkclassicalreview.com George Grella reviews the concert on February 13^th 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