Symphony No. 2, "Kenotaph"

Larcher’s symphony was written in 2015–2016 to a commission from the National Bank of Austria for its bicentenary. The premiere was given by the Vienna Philharmonic under Semyon Bychkov at the Musikverein in Vienna in June 2016. Larcher’s work, originally intended as a concerto for orchestra, engages with tradition as a fertile background, while still embodying the sound and consciousness of our time. The subtitle to Larcher’s work was motivated by the painful awareness of the thousands of refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean. The work can also be understood as a more general meditation on human tragedy and an exploration of profound existential issues. Larcher ties the material of the work together with a strong sense of dramaturgy, intense emotional expression and a feeling for musical narrative.

The song cycle ‘Die Nacht der Verlorenen’ for baritone and large ensemble sets fragments by Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) that were posthumously published. Bachmann’s dark texts inspired Larcher to write intense and compelling music that is entirely in tune with the mood of the poems. Overall, the work is dominated by slow, meditative and often dreamlike and unreal moods, effectively underpinned by delicate and carefully designed scoring that conjures up a multitude of colours and shades.

Italian baritone Andrè Schuen has won equally high acclaim for his performances in opera, oratorio and Lied. Schuen graduated from the Mozarteum University in 2010. From 2010 to 2014 he was a member of the Graz Opera House ensemble, and since then has, among others, sung in the series of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas conducted by Harnoncourt at the Theater an der Wien, at the Teatro Real in Madrid, in Lisbon, at the State Opera in Hamburg, Bavaria and Vienna. Representing contemporary opera have been the premiere of Anno Schreier’s Hamlet at the Theater an der Wien in 2016, and Thomas Larcher’s The Hunting Gun at the Bregenz Festival in summer 2018. Schuen has appeared in concert with many of the leading orchestras and conductors, and his regular partner in Lied is Daniel Heide.

Conductor Hannu Lintu was recently awarded with Diapason d’Or de l’année for his recording of Lutosławski’s Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 (ODE 1332-5) with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in the category of best orchestral album of the year. The same album also received earlier a GRAMMY nomination. The previous year, in 2019, an album of new works by Kaija Saariaho (ODE 1309-2) received a GRAMMY nomination and that year, Hannu Lintu and the Finnish RSO also won the Gramophone Award and ICMA Award for the recording of Bartók’s Violin Concertos (ODE 1317-2) together with Christian Tetzlaff. The latter album also received a nomination for the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Awards. Recordings by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu on Ondine have gathered numerous excellent reviews in the international press. Two of their recordings were nominated for Gramophone Awards in 2018. One of them, including orchestral works and songs by Jean Sibelius (ODE 1289-5) also won an ICMA Award in January 2018.

Sleeve notes in English and German

World première recordings