If there is such a thing as an "Archimedean point" in Peter Ruzicka's oeuvre, then it is the symphonies of Gustav Mahler: again and again Ruzicka's musical thought processes circle around Mahler, again and again structural "breaking points" in Mahler's music form the starting point for individual pieces. This applies in particular to "Abbruche" [Demolitions] for large orchestra, written in 1978 - nine fragmentary "phases", which the composer deprives of the development begun in them. The piece fulfils at last its own claim to be of a fragmentary nature. "Emanazione" [Emanation], variations for flute and four orchestral groups, is in the words of the composer an essay on solo virtuosity. Virtuosity is employed on the one hand as the extreme embodiment of emotional expression, on the other hand (in the Brechtian sense) 'presented to be viewed from all sides' as a mere cliche.

This portrait CD of the Berlin composer Sarah Nemtsov centres on her great cycle "A LONG WAY AWAY. Passagen". The ensemble Adapter performs this work in an exclusive new production which was realized in collaboration with Deutschlandradio Kultur and the German Music Council. Furthermore, there is also the new recording of her work "HOQUETI" which was premiered at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in 2011 and is now available as studio production of Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart for the first time. Sarah Nemtsov's compositions can be viewed as musical spaces set aside for memory: Apart from the forms of musical progression devised by her in analogy to various mechanisms of remembering, she also establishes references to various motifs and (dream) visions by means of the texts selected by her. Thus, Nemtsov's works become places of remembrance in which elements of cultural history and personal biography are bundled together. In this way, each memory she takes up, and the lines of perception associated with it, become not only an integral part of her own identity as an artist, but also an invitation to the audience to follow the traces laid down in her music.

This CD completes the CD series "Works for Piano" by Claude Debussy played by the American pianist Nina Tichman. This fifth CD focusses on the second book of "Pr�ludes". Themes which moved Debussy in a human way are encircled and appear again and again, for example portraits. In the second volume of the "Pr�ludes" the personalities portrayed are of a particularaly scurrilous type: General Edward Lavine was a famous personality in the revue theaters around 1910; half general, half clown, he appeared in a grotesque uniform and represented the clown-like side of military life. Samuel Pickwick Esquire, Perpetual President, Member of the Pickwick Club is a character from Charles Dickens' novel "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club", which Debussy pays loving homage to. Festive occasions is another theme that recurs again and again in Debussy's work. The brilliant closing work of the "Pr�ludes" ("Feux d'artifice") describes the fireworks on the French national holiday. With a loving dedication Debussy presented his little daughter Chouchou with his "Children's Corner". Each of the six miniatures he wrote as a present for her is a confession and a treasure.

In 1946 Hindemith, who became an American citizen in January of that year, composed the Requiem for Robert Shaw's Collegiate Chorale. Whitman's poem had been written on the death of Lincoln. Some parallel events at Roosevelt's death and the excellent interpretation presented Hindemith's work a great success. The recent identification of the Jewish melody Gaza, which appears in large parts of the work, reveals a further meaning: It must be seen as Hindemith's musical reaction to the Holocaust, a reaction, whose effect is all the more penetrating and persuasive, because Hindemith himself never revealed the identity of the Gaza melody for the purposes of cheap publicity. Hindemith wrote a Requiem for the living (the survivors), who are obligated to remember and identify themselves with the victims and must transform this historical moment into an imperishable personal experience.

The music of Andreas Dohmen is sound that have become process: sound not as a finished product, but as something that is done - at the moment of it's formation and as part of a development. This 'making' of sounds is one of the magnetic poles in the tension between Dohmen music; Here is the pull that the compositions have, perhaps, because they work in several layers. Because that always new themed "Make" of sounds is part of the music several times: at the level of their organization and just the immediate moment of sound production. A piece like "frottages" can therefore written using the same method from the visual arts, structured and organized - but (and this is in contemporary music is anything but self-evident) it sounds even after "frottages"! What we hear, these processes, we can follow the sound of the music for a little while before they get lost, interrupted or overlapped by others.

"I possess an uncanny passion for popular dance and have times when I dance night after night with bar dames (I only dance modern dances like the foxtrot, Boston, slingan, passo doppio, etc.), purely out of rhythmic enthusiasm and a subconscious sensual drive. Because of myunbelievably earthy, almost even animalistic consciousness, dancing infuses me with a phenomenal creative impulse." (Erwin Schulhoff in a letter to Alban Berg)

In the "Requiem for a Young Poet", his late masterpiece, Zimmermann sums up not only his own biography but also the spiritual situation of his (life-)time, the half century between the October revolution and the march of the Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. The Requiem is the most comprehensive realization of the large oratorio project which occupied Zimmermann from the mid-fifties on. This CD was awarded the "Choc Musique"-Award. Phylllis Bryn-Julson: soprano / Roland Hermann: baritone / Lutz Lansemann: speaker / Hans Franzen: speaker / Manfred-Schoof-Quintett / K�lner Rundfunkchor / Herbert Schernus: chorus master / Chor des Norddeutschen Rundfunks / Helmut Franz: chorus master / Wiener Rundfunkchor / Erwin Ortner: chorus master / K�lner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester / Gary Bertini: conductor.

Klaus K. H�bler's list of works is short. His oeuvre, abruptly interrupted because of illness in 1989, comprises just 24 scores. But this only seems to be a small number of works. They show a composer who found his own language very early and went on thinking, whose compositional development progressed at times so quickly and so purposefully that, when one compares the earlier with the later scores, it hardly seems possible that they were written by the same composer. The first phase is characterised on the one hand by soft plains of sound developing slowly, counterpointed by quietly circling, ostinato-like motifs. On the other hand an espressivo, sometimes evocative of Alban Berg, sometimes vehement, runs through the scores of this period; an espressivo which develops more and more from a "simple" style to a structural type precisely defined in instrumental-technical terms. This espressivo also seems to be the crucial point in the transition of the works of the second phase (since 1981). The technically exact definition of what the player should do changes in respect of what the player really does: The way the instruments are played becomes the aesthetic and analytical starting-point of H�bler's composing. In such a way compositions come into being in the second phase which are written "for the instrument" in a completely new way, even if the difficulties of performance - after all, everything is difficult which is not familiar - suggest the opposite to many players the first time they are confronted with the score.

Today it may still seem unusual to give access in a recording to pieces of music which only exist as fragments, yet it seems to me that this is fundamentally no less meaningful and exciting than the now customary practice of including in exhibitions of visual art representative sketches, notations, and preliminary designs using such material to document the manner in which the works of art came into being (Herbert Henck). The Fragments of 17 Piano Pieces - recorded for the first time - represent a chronological cross-section of some 40 years of Arnold Schoenberg's creative life and include all the important stages in his dramatic artistic development. Condensed, as it were, the transformation of Schoenberg's musical language is experienced in an almost exemplary manner, a transformation which otherwise extends through his complete works and is reflected in the most various musical styles, materials and instrumental combinations.

In summation it can be said that while this music is highly sensitive, it is never excessive. The composer employs no emotional self-indulgence; he always remains restrained and in control. He focuses on the music itself, requiring no extra-musical elements; his artistic expression needs no referential "context". The present CD contains only pure instrumental works by Leyendecker and thus corresponds to the catalogue of his works in which (to date) this genre predominates. Even in the few cases where he has set texts (Hern�ndez, Kafka), it is clear that for him only what can be conveyed tonally is of importance. This music has it's justification exclusively in itself. Georg Faust: violoncello / Sinfonie-Orchester des Norddeutschen Rundfunks / John Carewe: conductor / Brahms Quartett / Raymund Havenith: piano / Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Peter G�lke: conductor / Eva D�rnburg: violin.

With his operas "Electra", "Antigone" and "Medea" about three ancient Greek female figures – which he himself defined as ''lyrical tragedies'' – Theodorakis fulfilled an artistic promise made on August 6th, 1988 following the premiere of his "Zorba" ballet at the Verona Arena, namely to compose three pieces dedicated to the great Italian opera composers Verdi, Puccini and Bellini. ''For the last five years, I have lived with the texts of Euripides and Sophocles and worked on them. Five years which have become the best of my life, because the whole day long – mostly opposite the Acropolis, giving me the feeling that my house was on the foundations of the house of Sophocles, for we know he lived here where I live, in Athens – I could delve deep into the universal harmony I seek,'' he wrote after finishing his ambitious project.

It may come as a surprise but one of the leading creators of Keyboard music in the twentieth century is a composer by the name of John Cage. Cage's reputation is so deeply associated with the avantgarde, with chance music, graphic notation, performance art, technology and Zen Buddhism that is early, conventionally-notated music for percussion ensemble and keyboards is sometimes neglected. Or was until recently. In the last few years - with the advent of performances and recordings like this one - there has been a renewed appreciation of Cage's achievements in the earlier part of his creative life. Of course, Cage's keyboard music is not just keyboard music. Cage's once infamous "prepared piano" - born out of need as well as desire - is a keyboard instrument unto itself, as different from the romantic piano as that instrument is from the baroque harpsichord. But even in his "unprepared" piano music, Cage shows his individuality and distance from European tradition. This production received the quarterly German Record Critics' Award.

Weiss is archaic in his material: he shuns electronic elements and favours natural sound sources (voices, hands, feet) and employs considerable fantasy in the process of deriving sounds from objects which in their original environment have no musical function.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. Harmen de Boer: clarinet / Taco Kooistraa: cello / Yoko Abe, Rainer Boesch, Carlos Roque Alsina, Richard Teitelbaum, Adam Wodnicki: piano.

A French critic wrote about Emil Naoumoff's orchestration of "Pictures at an Exhibition": "When he took hold of this mythical work, Naoumoff forgot the arrangements of a Ravel or an Ashkenazy and transformed it triumphantly into a true piano concerto. A work whose success is easily explained by it's color, panache, radiance, and supreme fidelity to the spirit of the original, and which may well prompt other pianists to adopt it into their repertoires!" (from Pierre Petit's article "Du Panache" which appeared in "Le Figaro") In Naoumoff's composition "M�ditation", the solo instrument alternates between being narrator and commentator.