THOMAS LARCHER

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Thomas Larcher is one of the most imaginative voices in classical music today. Born in Innsbruck in 1963, Larcher grew up in Austria’s Tyrol and studied composition and piano in Vienna.

Larcher’s compositional output boasts a plethora of orchestral works, the latest of which, Time, received its world premiere with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in September 2022, with forthcoming performances in San Diego, Vienna, Hamburg and Amsterdam.  Larcher’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Kenotaph’ was premiered in 2016 by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with Semyon Bychkov and was awarded the 2018 Le Prix de Composition Musicale de Monaco, receiving many performances worldwide. A piano concerto for Kirill Gerstein was premiered in 2021 by Bergen Philharmonic and Edward Gardner, and performed by co-commissioners Berlin Philharmonic with Semyon Bychkov, with future performances in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and the BBC Proms.

Larcher’s skill in writing for the voice is evident. A Padmore Cycle for tenor and piano and recomposed for orchestra was written for Mark Padmore and premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2014. The Living Mountain for soprano and ensemble received its world premiere in Amsterdam with Sarah Aristidou and Asko|Schönberg in April 2022 with several further performances in 2022 and 2023.

In 1994 Larcher founded the annual festival “Klangspuren”, an internationally renowned festival for new music. In 2003 he established the “Music im Riesen” festival in Wattens, Austria, an annual gathering of the best international chamber musicians, and a platform to support young local musicians.

In 2015 Larcher received the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Elise L. Stoeger Prize 2014/15 awarded every two years in recognition of significant contributions to chamber music composition. Following this, Larcher was the recipient of the Ernest Krenek Prize from the City of Vienna in November 2018 and the next year was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize.

Photo: Eduadus Luo