Thomas Larcher: Madhares

Top musicians from ECM’s artist roster, pianist Till Fellner and viola player Kim Kashkashian among them, deliver both fiery and sensitive interpretations of new, mainly orchestral works by Thomas Larcher. It’s the third ECM disc exclusively devoted to the Austrian composer who juxtaposes tonal harmony and avant-garde compositional technique in most original ways.

Larcher’s recent pieces are marked by intense sonic imagination, great rhythmic energy and a virtuoso impact that makes for immediately rewarding listening. This recording features Böse Zellen and Still, respectively piano and viola concertos performed by Till Fellner and Kim Kashkashian with the Munich Chamber Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. The disc is enhanced by his third string quartet Madhares which is played by the youthful French Quatuor Diotima in their ECM debut.

The creative output of Thomas Larcher (born in Innsbruck in 1963) – whom The Times recently called “a musical talent of unbounded sensitivity and distinction bound for 21st-century glory” – has been championed on ECM New Series since 2001. His earliest compositions date from childhood. After studying in Vienna he embarked on a successful career as a concert pianist with a particular focus on new music. Heinz Holliger, Dennis Russell Davies and Manfred Eicher were amongst the friends and colleagues who encouraged Larcher to pursue composition further. Following early forays into piano music – some of which he performed himself on the CD Naunz (2001, 4617182) – he moved on to larger items of chamber music (Ixxu; 2006, 4763156), which in turn have led, over the years, to orchestral music and concertante compositions. Last autumn Larcher’s piano piece “What becomes” attracted wide-spread attention when premiered by Leif Ove Andsnes.

Reviews

FonoForum 10/10: “It is a piano concerto and yet it is explicitly not, for the pianist Till Fellner does not dominate the the scene in a virtuoso manner, but rather plays a prepared piano over relatively long stretches, its percussive sound dominates its percussive tonal character predominates and is by the Munich Chamber Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davis it is only in the last movement that the piano shines The last movement, freed from gaffa tape and rubber wedges But here, too, there are only single, dripping notes, dripping notes that Fellner places in the room. Static, flowing in small encircles, dramatically thrown up dramatically thrown up, is the touching, long-drawn out kim Kashkashian’s touching, drawn-out gesture of sound “Here, too, the events, supported by the chamber orchestra, rush up Chamber orchestra.”