New Recordings

Till Fellner, piano; Kim Kashkashian, viola; Munich Chamber Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies conducting, and Quatour Diotima
(ECM ***1/2)

This disc signifies the emergence of an imposing, important new compositional personality - 46-year-old, Vienna-based Thomas Larcher. Initially, he pursued a career as a concert pianist, but he is now focusing on composing in a manner that's definitely in step with the European modernists but has a distinctively dense, busy richness that promises great things to come. Actually, great things are here already - which is apparent from these fully realized performances with this dream lineup of soloists and ensembles.

On an analytic level, the music can be bewilderingly illogical; the album notes even go so far as to call it stream of consciousness. But what draws you back to it again and again is the almost spatial juxtaposition of precisely molded, attention-commanding sounds that create alternately stormy and meditative collages you simply want to live in. Periodically, Larcher focuses on a single note and seems to probe it to death. Is this the ultimate minimalism?

- D.P.S.