Thomas Larcher: What Becomes

There's a Gerard Hoffnung cartoon of Anton Webern as a baby making miniature sounds at a piano. There's something in the 12 pieces of Thomas Larcher's Poems, some of them like slices of pop songs, that brings the image to mind. Like What Becomes, the Poems are perhaps best thought of as a set of diary entries or jottings from a musical notebook, sequenced, Schumann-like, into a set. Whatever way you regard them, these pieces, and the giddy Smart Dust for prepared piano, are all beautifully shaped by Tamara Stefanovich. A Padmore Cycle, with tenor Mark Padmore, and Larcher at the piano, sets compressed, enigmatic texts by Hans Aschenwald and Alois Hotschnig in a perfect match of words, multiple voice styles and piano. url.ie/55ay