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2 December 2024

Thomas Simaku World Premiere at Wigmore Hall

A substantial new work by Thomas Simaku, Catena IV (for solo piano), will receive its world premiere at London’s most prestigious hall of chamber music, Wigmore Hall, on 2 January 2025. The piece is written for and dedicated to Danny Driver – celebrated British pianist, whose “most recent release of György Ligeti’s Piano Études has met with particular critical acclaim”.

This is Simaku’s fourth work in the Catena Cycle - the first three have been recorded by Joseph Houston and Dimitri Vassilakis, and released by BIS Records and NMC Recordings in 2000 and 2023 respectively. The overall formal structure of Catena IV consists of nine main sections and four interludes played without a break. The main sections are considered as self-contained units in a chain of events, which are linked by interludes and silences; in a nutshell, the work as a whole is in one movement lasting some 20 minutes. As Simaku writes in his programme note, “Focal points of the entire work are the 4th and 5th sections entitled Hommage à Chopin' and Hommage à Ligeti respectively. The first uses the exact notes of Chopin's opening motif from his Ballade No 1 in G-minor Op. 23. Although in a completely different stylistic environment, Chopin’s six different notes peacefully co-exist in a non-tonal canvas within the spectrum of total chromaticism.

Hommage à Ligeti is based on a reinterpretation of his lamento motif, which he has used in a number of works. There is no ‘quotation’ as such - the pitches are completely different, as is the harmony and phrase structure, but the adjacent tone/semitone relationship of the motif is preserved in its linear displays. These short phrases, whose length varies constantly, are reinterpreted in both horizontal and vertical dimensions and are interlinked by the ubiquitous chain-like passages of the Catena. Towards the end of the piece (section VIII), there is another unit aptly entitled Ligeti meets Chopin, where the entire opening motif from Ballade No 1 is heard as a melodic line unfolding gradually in the same middle register as in Chopin’s piece, but here it is superimposed by different manifestations of the lamento motif in the extreme registers. The textural canvas as a whole is enriched by another layer, as well as the chain-like sonorities, which permeate the entire piece.”

More details about the event can be found here.

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