Albanian Composer among 21st Century Classics
By Merita B. McCormack
Washington DC
As appeared in ILLYRIA NEWSPAPER on June 17 2008
Thomas Simaku is an Albanian composer based in England, and teaches at the University of York. It is not the first time that we have come across his achievements and successes which have marveled people in both sides of the Atlantic. As the official York University Newsletter emphasizes, “his music has been reaching audiences all over Europe and the USA for over a decade and it has been awarded a host of accolades for its expressive qualities and its unique blend of drama, intensity and modernism”.
Simaku’s 50th birthday in 2008 is being marked with the release of a portrait CD comprising six works performed by the London – based Kreutzer Quartet. Released on Naxos 21st Century Classics, the CD (8.570428) was launched at the Spring Festival of New Music in York on 8th May 2008 in a concert given by the Kreutzer Quartet. The disc features his compositions Radius – String Quartet No 2 and Voci Velesti – String Quartet No 3, which were recently given their British premieres by the Kreutzer Quartet.
Simaku says: “the main idea behind the two quartets, and, in a wider sense, all the works included in this disc, is that of a voyage in time in search of an expression where modern and ancient aspects of utterance, musical or otherwise, interconnect and complement each other. The idiosyncratic quality of the music lies, I believe, in this search for meaningful relationships between modality and contemporary musical idiom. Following my studies at the Tirana Conservatoire in 1982, I worked for three years as Music Director in a remote town in Southern Albania near the border with Greece. The first-hand experience I had from working with folk musicians and listening to ancient songs seems to have had a lasting effect on my creative consciences.”
The CD will be available to American public as of May 28 2008. Here are some of the first reactions:
Naxos 21st Century Classics 8.570428, Kreutzer Quartet:
I came across the Albanian-born Thomas Simaku (b. 1958) in the World Music Days 2000, at which his Soliloquy for Violin solo stood out. I wrote about it as "something for enterprising violinists to seek out - - a piece of unaccompanied violin writing which brings out the instrument's natural genius for passionate expression, fully realised in the young Luxembourg violinist Vania Lecuit's riveting interpretation".
Now it has been joined by similar works for cello & viola, here the centre pieces of a survey of the chamber music for strings by this composer, who now teaches at York. They go well together and each is played compellingly by a member of the Kreutzers. These Solilquies could prove welcome interludes in chamber music recitals for various permutations of instruments. Peter Grahame Woolf, Musical Pointers, London, May 2008
Working in atonal terms, yet with a backdrop of salient musical ideas derived from the sounds of folk idioms heard in the Balkans, both quartets are in the mainstream of today’s modernity. Between these two works the disc includes works for solo instruments - violin, viola and cello. Simaku’s aim in the Due Sotto-Voci is to have the violin singing in two voices with an ‘orchestral body’ that accompanies itself. And if you think that is impossible on one instrument, then suspend belief and listen. Naxos Website, May 2008
Thomas Simaku's string quartets have much to commend them... Simaku has a keen ear for the texture of sounds. He writes sympathetically and perceptively for strings, taking full advantage of the varying timbres in their individual sonorities.These 'voices from heaven' have an animated serenity, quite secular, outside time. Classical Source, Review of British premieres at St. Bartholomew's the Great, London, July 2007
