Böse Zellen for piano and orchestra (2006/rev. 2007)

Thomas Larcher of Austria, who has developed into a widely respected double talent as a composer and concert pianist, received a precisely prescribed commission for a piano concerto which, at least in terms of the orchestration, was to react to one of the most shadowy and operatically dramatic of concertos. What came out of it was not a mirror of the Concerto in E-flat major KV 482, but rather a piece called “Böse Zellen”, barely a half an hour in length, in which the 42 year old Larcher again demonstrated that it is possible to lastingly shift the tectonic plates of perception through a very consciously shaped stylistic pluralism. To achieve this, Larcher, who has been influenced by Heinz Holliger and Isabel Mundry, does not, of course, give us any familiar points of orientation which would signal a return to the post-modern in the four movements that seamlessly flow into each other.

Instead Larcher exploits the reservoir of already existing musical conflict potentials, transforming them into subcutaneous, highly dramatic and audibly disparate worlds of sound. The Mozartean orchestral apparatus with its brass and woodwind groups is merely used as a springboard for a completely unsettling personality profile in which the forces and energies of despondency, resignation and loneliness prevail. As in his earlier compositions, Larcher is simultaneously reflecting upon phenomena external to music, letting it rumble around in his short-cropped skull until, as now in the premiere at the Zech Zollverein in Essen, it finally finds expression through his pianist hands. The title “Böse Zellen” was inspired by a film of the same name by the Austrian filmmaker Barbara Albert, in which relationships are depicted in a brutally unadorned way.

Alongside this morbidly distraught state, Larcher develops his heart-rhythm-system, which beats incessantly through the penetrating orchestra movement and the frightening almost motor-driven piano repetitions, only to come near to dying out at the dangerous edge of silence. The fact that Larcher not only follows in the footsteps of John Cage with his prepared piano, but also takes up the archaic suggestiveness of the Georgian composer Giya Kantscheli, is testimony to the broad scope of his precise listening, a practice which he pursues unfalteringly. Thus through his cooperation with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, to whose conductor the piece is dedicated, Thomas Larcher has not only ensured the rehabilitation of the piano concerto, but has with “Böse Zellen” also clearly pointed the way for the future possibilities of the genre.

Guido Fischer: Not Inhibited about Biting Any More, Frankfurter Rundschau July 21, 2006