Thomas Simaku – World Premiere of “Morea” for Violin & String Orchestra
Thomas Simaku’s new work for Violin & String Orchestra will receive its world premiere on 27 September 2024, performed by Leonard Simaku (Switzerland) and the Orchestra of the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Tirana, and conducted by Rafał Janiak (Poland).
Morea is a winning work of the Ministry of Culture of Albania’s 2022 National Competition. Coincidentally, Rafał Janiak was the conductor of the world premiere of Simaku’s Concerto for Orchestra – winning work of Lutosławski International Competition in 2013 – in the final concert of the 2013 Warsaw Autumn festival with Warsaw Philharmonic.
The main idea for this piece stems from an ancient folk song, Moj e Bukura Moré (My Beautiful Morea), which has its origin in Southern Italy and it is sung to this day by the Arbëresh people – an Albanian community, whose ancestors settled in the Kingdom of Naples some 500 years ago. In fact, this is a song that epitomizes a zealously preserved rich musical culture of this community – one of the oldest minorities in Italy.
As stated in the composer’s programme note: ‘The formal structure of the piece is articulated in two main sections, and the idiosyncratic quality of the music here lies precisely in the relationship between these two parts, which employ different idiomatic approaches.’
Several Italian newspapers and media outlets have announced the concert in Tirana. As Chronache di Milano points out, the first part focuses ‘entirely on composed rhythms and new colors and sounds, with refined and virtuosic effects on the fingerboard of the violin, which establishes a close dialogue with the orchestra. Then, in the central part the theme of the famous popular song Morea is exposed, which refers to the Kingdom of Morea or Venetian Morea, which was the official name that the Republic of Venice gave to the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece and known as such until the 19th centry, when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, during the sixth Turkish-Venetian war in 1684-1699. The melody of Morea is varied and elaborated virtuosically, with effects, until the end of the work’.
In his programme note, the composer concludes: ‘The contrast between the two parts is audibly clear, but it is also clear that these two idioms (tonal and non-tonal) sit comfortably next to each other. In a nutshell, this composition could well be described as an imaginary journey where ancient and modern aspects of musical utterance interact and complement each other’.https://www.uymp.co.uk/news/2024-09-25-thomas-simaku-world-premiere-morea-for