Stockhausen's Amour is a series of five pieces for clarinet based on five short poems written as gifts for women whom the composer was deeply connected to. The most complex and hypnotic of these is Die Schmetterlinge spielen (The Butterflies Playing). in this composition, Stockhausen sets to music the flight of two butterflies, each moving with two different rhythmic meters and speeds. Der kleine Harlekin (The Little Harlequin) is probably the best known of Stockhausen's theatrical works. The clarinetist faces a musically demanding score while wearing a costume and performing a range of dance movements precisely indicated in the score. Wochenkreis (Circle of the Week) is a series of songs describing an initiatory journey from birth to ascension to God, accompanied by the electronic sounds produced by the synthesizer player who has the role of the antagonist Lucifer.

Lionel Rogg: organist, composer and teacher very much in demand. The music on this CD combines compositional variety and stylistic diversity. "Rogg plays Rogg" is an eventful composer's portrait which will fascinate the passionate listener of organ music. See also: Org 70052 Concert-Hall Organs (were Lionel Rogg plays works by Vierne, Widor, Franck, Bizet, Liszt, and Rogg).

Based upon works of Aischylos and Euripides, the Symphony No.4 leads to the core of tragedy which is human fate. Theodorakis' symphonies are characterised neither by pure material avant-gardism, nor by aetheticising dissociation. They are direct testimonies to life, the statements of a man who has never tried to hide his inner and outward participation, a man who admits he has suffered and continues to suffer. And at the same time they are a declaration of opposition to the coldness and lack of sentiment in a method of composition which is based primarily on mathematical calculation and refrains from emotional involvement. Music does not become an occasion through the mind alone, but without the mind music remains incomplete. In the fourth symphony (Symphony of Choirs, 1986/87), Theodorakis interweaves three lines of tradition: the symphonic tradition and the integration of vocals into symphonic works, the tradition of great tragic women figures, which he also took up in his stage works (the operas Medea, Electra and Antigone), and finally the tradition of a Hellenocentric perception of history, whereby this is still no contradiction of the composer's cosmopolitan character. The fourth symphony contains two movements based on texts from Aeschylus (Eumenides) and Euripides (The Phoenician Women). The remastered version of this CD has been recorded live at Athens during the world premiere of the composition. The booklet includes the completely translated libretto, extensive liner notes and some personal remarks of the composer himself.

With Earle Brown - A Life in Music - Volume 5, WERGO has again dug up treasures of contemporary music from the 1960s and 1970s: The set with 3 CDs not only contains one of the first recordings of Charles Ives' "Concord Sonata" by Aloys Kontarsky but also is a testimony to the virtuosity of Severino Gazzelloni who is, without doubt, one of the greatest flutists of the 20th century. In addition, it contains music of the group Sonic Arts Union with the four pioneers of electronic music David Behrman, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma. The 18 LPs of Earle Brown's (1926-2002) legendary Contemporary Sound Series, recorded between 1960 and 1973, have become a rarity in great demand since the series was discontinued in 1978. These rare and historically important recordings have been carefully digitized and remastered by the Earle Brown Music Foundation. Until the end of 2011, WERGO is going to release six 3-CD sets of these recordings, covering the extraordinary world of contemporary and avant-garde music which flourished in Europe, the USA, Latin America and Japan in the 1960s and the early 1970s.

The complete symphonic version of Theodorakis' best-known work including English, French and German libretto. In the "Zorba" ballet suite, Mikis Theodorakis uses almost exclusively well-known popular songs which he composed mainly in the 1960s. Some of them have been incorporated in the work as melodies, some of them as vocal pieces. It took twenty years before the composer became his normal self again; he first had to experience the disillusionment at the end of the 1970s concerning the social progress in Greece in order to be finally able to pick up the musical material, continue the compositional impetus of the 1950s and develop an appreciation for the genre of the opera in the mid-eighties which suits his composer's mentality – both as a melodist and as a symphonic composer – very well. When looking at the last and probably most productive period of his life, Theodorakis' return to symphonic music in 1980 must be seen as an act of liberation, as a return to his self. Since then, he has written several symphonies and oratorio-like works. In 1987, at last, the Zorba ballet marks the beginning of a new aesthetic practice.

The selection of works presented on this CD constitute a world premi�re realized based on seven autograph manuscripts found in the Biblioth�que Inguimbertine of Carpentras by Joseph Scherpereel who also wrote the essay in the booklet. The 'Livre d'Orgue de Carpentras' contains organ works by the 18th-century organist and composer Louis Archimbaud that are organized according to their liturgical function or church mode: Pr�ludes, El�vations, Offertoires. Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet-Hakim, who is internationally renowned for her talent as an organist and erudition as a musicologist, worked enthusiastically to give new life to these manuscripts which must be 'interpreted' according to the customs and traditions of the period: harmonic additions indicated by occasional figured bass notation, notes in�gales (unequal notes), ornamentation, suitable and varied registrations, and on an instrument chosen expressly for it.

The present recording of Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot lunaire" was the first long-playing record released by the newly founded label WERGO in 1962, which laid the foundation of the label's decades-long story of success. This important recording -with the soprano Helga Pilarczyk and under the direction of Pierre Boulez - has not been available on CD up to now. Now the label releases this highlight from it's early days in an excellent sound quality on CD for the first time. The musical setting of "Three Times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire'" for speaking voice, piano, flute (or piccolo), clarinet (or bass clarinet), violin (or viola), and violoncello Op. 21 was composed by Schoenberg in just a few weeks, between 12 March and 30 May 1912, to be precise. The composition was written at the initiative of the actress Albertine Zehme. Schoenberg met her shortly after he had moved to Vienna from Berlin in 1911 and dedicated the piece to her "with heartfelt friendship".

Works for piano and organ - assembled on this CD to celebrate Max Reger's 125th birthday - played by the two organ virtuosos Wolfgang R�bsam (Chicago) and Andreas Rothkopf (Saarbr�cken).

In Ade, a work for musical theater, Harald Weiss combines elements of classical music with folk, rock, and minimal music to create the style typical of his work, which escapes any possible classification. The music leaves behind a sense of astonishment that can perceived as a lasting, inherent style.

The chorale "Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern" [How beautifully the morning star shines] by Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608) originated as a form of music for regular use in pastoral services at a time full of tensions within religious and social history, but it rose far above these original circumstances, not least because it bore within it signs of an artwork rich in gripping linguistic and melodic interest. This chorale has inspired Catholic and Protestant composers alike to musical adaptations. It runs through the organ literature, new and old, that renowned composers have written for liturgical and concert settings. The ecstatic splendor of the "phosphoros" (Greek for "morning star") shines even in secular symphonic music up to the present.

The repertoire on this CD extends broadly - in terms of style, genre, and chronology - across the compositional output of Igor Stravinsky. Spanning from his most celebrated score for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, "Le Sacre du printemps" (1913), through the neo-classical Concerto en mi b�mol "Dumbarton Oaks" (1938), up to the serial "Movements" (1959), the selection testifies to the enormous richness and variety of his artistic legacy. This diverse repertoire is presented here by Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams, however, from a unifying viewpoint: the "black and white" perspective of arrangements for piano duet or two pianos that the composer himself made.

Benjamin Schweitzer began his musical studies at the junior department of the Lubeck Music Academy. At age sixteen, he received several prizes at composition and instrumental competitions for young musicians. He completed his studies at the Dresden Music Academy and spent a year studying with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy. The chamber music works compiled on this recording, performed by the Ensemble Courage led by Titus Engel, were written between 2005 and 2008. They document the composer's quest for something one could describe as "beauty." Schweitzer leaves aside components such as melodic elements and virtuoso figurations in favor of extremely fine gradations of a few chosen sounds and textures.

The Latvian State Choir is one of the finest choirs I have ever heard... With Maris Sirmais, the choir is fortunate to work with an extraordinary choral director. The expressivity of his conducting places both the singers and the audience under his spell. In his experienced hands, the acoustics of the ancient, legendary Eberbach Monastery are transformed into a faithful ally and magician's assistant. I am sure that after hearing this CD you will share my joy and enthusiasm as well. (Rodion Shchedrin) With his Russian Liturgy, "The Sealed Angel", Rodion Shchedrin has written a work of inner contemplation of timeless relevance, which will deeply move every listener who approaches the piece with an open heart. Live recording of the concert on 17 July 2009 during the Rheingau Musik Festival in the great basilica of the Eberbach Monastery.

If you're holding this CD in your hands, you prize the unexpected. Not because it's written on the cover, but most likely just because you like to listen to new music. In other words: The unexpected is exactly what you're expecting. Admittedly, this expectation makes it considerably harder to present you with something genuinely unexpected in the seventh CD of the Edition MusikFabrik released by the label WERGO. The question posed by David Lang in the title of his melodrama - "Are you experienced?" - is rhetorical in nature, given that the piece takes a speculative look at the unexpected end of a concert evening. Philippe Boesmans, best known as a composer of operas, surprises us with a "Biedermeier" sextet. For Richard Barrett, interference becomes a structural principle, and Luca Francesconi knows the formula for driving the formulaic out of music. The tracks on this CD also trace an arc, from the beginning of the Ensemble MusikFabrik i'm WDR concert series to a world premiere during concert twenty-four at the network's Cologne studios: twenty-four concerts that formed the basis of the first seven CDs in the Edition MusikFabrik series. After many more concerts, the public can answer the ironic question "Are you experienced?" with confidence: "Yes, we are." How about you?

For half a century, Juan Carlos Paz has had an impact on the avant-garde aesthetic in Argentina and Latin America. In honor of his decades of commitment to Latin American contemporary music, Wergo presents this portrait of Paz that features two world premi�re recordings.