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| Thoma Simaku sitting at the piano holding a pentagram notebook |
"The album is characterized by a powerful musical imagination throughout," says the prestigious British magazine BBC Music Magazine in its review written by the esteemed English critic Martin Cotton, awarding Albanian composer Thoma Simaku's new album a 5-star rating.
"These works from the last four years are performed by their dedicated interpreters, who fully immerse themselves in the music, both technically and musically... a strong musical imagination shines throughout the entire album."
This monographic album, just released by the British record label NMC Recordings, includes five new works by composer Simaku, interpreted by Jérôme Comte, Clément Saunier, Dimitri Vassilakis, and Aurélien Gignoux – soloists from the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris.
In their press release, NMC Recordings writes:
"'Solo,' Simaku's fourth full album and the first release on NMC, features some of the composer's latest works, each of which achieves a depth of expression beyond what seems possible with a single instrument.
Simaku's music has been praised for its 'depth of expression and powerful imagination' (British Composer Award), and his unique blend of lyricism and complex modernity can be traced to a pivotal moment in the composer's life when he moved from restrictive Stalinist Albania, where his education was highly censored, to the United Kingdom in 1991.
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| Screenshot from BBC Magazine where is written about Simaku |
His studies with David Blake at the University of York (where he is now a professor of composition) were an awakening for the composer, immersing him in the music of modernist pioneers like Ligeti, Kurtág, and Boulez. In the years that followed, Simaku's free exploration of these ideas led him to carve out a compositional voice that 'leaves you breathless' (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), earning him numerous prestigious awards, including the first prize at the International Competition for the 100th Anniversary of Lutosławski in 2013.