Obra: A Padmore Cycle

Thank goodness for the BBCSO! The London concert season would be far less colourful without it...

Tirolian composer Thomas Larcher has always struck me as a musician in the mold of that great Austrian stylistic dabbler, Ernst Krenek. A great deal of the twentieth-century finds itself reflected in Krenek, who rode the wave of numerous landmark ‘-isms’, a master of all (and his twelve-tone opera Karl V, the first full-length instance of operatic serialism, is a masterpiece) and exemplar of none.