Thomas Larcher (born 16 September 1963, in Innsbruck) is an Austrian composer and pianist.
Thomas Larcher completed his studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna under Heinz Medjimorec and Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano), and Erich Urbanner (composition). He became well known as a pianist whilst at university, focusing particularly in the area of contemporary music.
Larcher has performed under conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Dennis Russell Davies and Franz Welser-Möst, and worked closely with composers such as Heinz Holliger, Olga Neuwirth and Isabel Mundry. He is also active in the sphere of music festivals: he founded the "Sound Traces/Klangspuren festival (which he ran from 1993 to 2004) and the “Music in the Giant/Musik im Riesen” festival, which he has been running since 2004. [1]
For some years now, Larcher has dedicated himself primarily to composing and is today considered one of the leading composers of contemporary classical music in Austria. His early works (including “Naunz” and “Kraken”) are scored almost exclusively for piano and chamber orchestra. In recent years, his oeuvre has also encompassed, alongside chamber music (String Quartets 2 and 3, “My Illness is the Medicine I Need”), more compositions for orchestra and ensemble, as well as works for soloist and orchestra (e.g. “Böse Zellen”, “Die Nacht der Verlorenen”).
Larcher has written numerous compositions for internationally renowned soloists and ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta, the Artemis Quartet, Heinrich Schiff, Matthias Goerne, Till Fellner, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. He has been commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, London’s Southbank Centre and Wigmore Hall, and the Zaterdagmatinee in Amsterdam.
Larcher's works are published by Schott Music.
CDs with music by Thomas Larcher
CDs with Thomas Larcher as interpreter
Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is an English composer of classical music.
The Gramophone Classical Music Awards, launched in 1977, are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry. They are often viewed as equivalent to or surpassing the American Grammy award, and referred to as the Oscars for classical music. They are widely regarded as the most influential and prestigious classical music awards in the world. According to Matthew Owen, national sales manager for Harmonia Mundi USA, "ultimately it is the classical award, especially worldwide."
Richard Danielpour is an American composer.
Péter Eötvös is a Hungarian composer, conductor and teacher.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and professor.
Dan Welcher is an American composer, conductor, and music educator.
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.
Hans Gál OBE was an Austrian composer, pedagogue, musicologist, and author, who emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1938.
Georg Friedrich Haas is an Austrian composer. In a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, pieces by Haas received the most votes (49), and his composition in vain (2000) topped the list.
Sylvie Bodorová is a Czech composer. During a career spanning from the late 1970s to the present day she has composed a large number of works for various instruments, both solo and orchestral pieces, and produced commissions for cities, festivals and organisations around the world. She was a founder member of the Czech classical group Quattro, formed in 1996.
David Horne is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read Music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music.
The Diapason d'Or is a recommendation of outstanding (mostly) classical music recordings given by reviewers of Diapason magazine in France, broadly equivalent to "Editor's Choice", "Disc of the Month" in the British Gramophone magazine.
Johannes Maria Staud is an Austrian composer.
Erich Urbanner is an Austrian composer and teacher.
The Munich Chamber Orchestra is a German chamber orchestra based in Munich. Its primary concert venue is the Prinzregententheater, Munich. The MKO also gives concerts in Munich at such venues as the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Schwere Reiter, and at the Muffathalle during the Munich Biennale.
Gerhard Präsent is an Austrian composer, conductor and academic teacher.
Gerhard Schedl was an Austrian composer.
Sebastian Fagerlund is a Finnish composer. He is described as “a post-modern impressionist whose sound landscapes can be heard as ecstatic nature images which, however, are always inner images, landscapes of the mind”. Echoes of Western culture, Oriental music and heavy metal may, for example, all be detected under the same Sky in the music of Fagerlund.