News

Austrian premiere for Thomas Simaku

Thomas Simaku’s award-winning work, Soliloquy V – Flauto Acerbo will receive its Austrian Premiere at Vienna Concert Hall, Schubert-Saal, on 20th April 2015. The piece will be performed by Lorina Wallaster as part of Musica Juventutis programme.

Soliloquy V – Flauto Acerbo received the 2009 British Composer Award in the solo/duo category; the judging panel ‘unanimously agreed that the winning work redefines the instrument in a visionary and entirely original way. They praised it for its virtuosity, depth of expression, and powerful imagination.’

Commissioned by Christopher Orton and the BBC Performing Arts Fund, the world premiere was given at the Greenwich International Early Music Festival on 16 November 2008. Subsequently, the piece was selected by the international jury and was one of the works representing the UK at the 2012 ISCM-World Music Days in Belgium.

Simaku writes: ‘After the première of Soliloquy I for Violin at the 2000 ISCM Festival, the idea of composing a cycle of solo pieces – the aim was to create different characters within the same protagonist who ‘narrates’ in different languages, as it were – materialized itself. The cycle so far consists of seven works; with each piece, the soloistic idea operates on a different instrumental canvas and is elaborated according to the expressive qualities and the technical potentiality of each instrument. The idiosyncratic quality of this particular work is to be found perhaps in the second part of the title, Flauto Acerbo!’

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    His work will be performed by a Grammy Award-winning ensemble

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