"Thomas Simaku is one of the most distinctive voices in British music today" – Jim Samson.
Part of a compelling programme by the acclaimed British pianist Danny Driver, including ‘sublime works’ by Chopin and Ligeti’s ‘complex creation of 1951-3’, the world premiere of Catena IV for piano by Thomas Simaku took place in London at a packed hall of Wigmore Hall on 2 January 2025. British musicologist Jim Samson – a leading authority on the music of Chopin, and author of several books – wrote, in his programme note: “Born in Albania, but granted British citizenship in 2000, Thomas Simaku is one of the most distinctive voices in British music today. Catena IV, given its world premiere in this concert, is the fourth work of his Catena Cycle for solo piano. The composer stresses that, despite its nine self-contained sections and four interludes, it was conceived as a single movement, a linked chain of events rather than episodic form. Our programming here is strategic, given that its fourth section is a ‘Hommage à Chopin’ (built on the exact notes of the opening of First Ballade) and its fifth section a ‘Hommage à Ligeti’ (a re-working of Ligeti’s signature lamento motif). Fittingly, the eighth is titled ‘Ligeti meets Chopin’. Here the Chopin quotation is overlaid by different manifestations of the lamento motif, and at registral extremes.”
