Reviews of CD What Becomes
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