From around the world
In the beginning was cloning
Gerhard R. Koch | Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | 23 January 2001
The young composer does not see himself as avant-garde: what matters to him is intelligibility, sensual suggestion, both vocal and instrumental lavishness, and a corresponding level of effectiveness. This at any rate he achieves time and time again. The term “neo-Romantic” would be too prosaic a way of defining this style: this is music which cannot be narrowed down even to pure tonality. What Shohat does manage to do is to draw great melodic arcs, above all making the vocal parts soar bewitchingly. Shohat represents a generation of composers, in the West too, including Germany, who programmatically behave in an anti-dogmatic fashion. As interpreters who are active on an international level, cosmopolitan, self-assured and articulate, they represent their position with verve…