An excellent article about Simaku’s Catena III - Corona “exploring the contrasts of the world” has been published in the classical music e-magazine Interlude in January 2024. Composed during the first lockdown, the piece was written for Ensemble Intercontemporain soloist Dimitri Vassilakis, and it is included in Simaku’s latest CD SOLO released by the British label NMC Recordings in September 2023.
Written by musicologist Maureen Buja, the article begins: “The piece opens with a crash that quickly fades away. This is Albanian-British composer Thomas Simaku’s piano work Catena III - Corona. A product of the first lockdown that started in March 2020, when about half the world’s population had to stay at home, Catena III - Corona begins by exploring the contrasts of the world we are confined to.”