In a series of five compact discs WERGO releases Claude Debussy's complete works for piano - masterly played by Nina Tichman. Music is for Debussy part of nature, originating from it and returning to it. As a sensitive mediator it allows one a glimpse of an original state of things in which man and nature were one - and at the same time documents painfully the loss of this original state. Expressions like "music of silence" and "music in the open air" are key expressions in understanding Debussy's works.

The compositions on the present CD are taken from Krzysztof Penderecki's rich collection of religious choral music and trace his development from 1958 to 1987. "Aus den Psalmen Davids" (From the Psalms of David) is Penderecki's first choral composition, which he wrote in 1958. It is one of the three works with which he won all three prizes in a competition sponsored by the Polish Composer's Union. The most important influences are Schoenberg and Stravinsky. With the "Stabat Mater" Penderecki began his work on the "St. Luke's Passion". It spans the stylistic spectrum from Gregorian chant to clusters, from major triads to 12-tone chords. The "Agnus Dei" was written as one of the first parts of the "Polish Requiem"; it was composed spontaneously on 28 May 1981, the day which Cardinal Wyszynski died, the great Polish prelate who was a friend and supporter of the composer. It is a compellingly beautiful piece for 8-part choir written in the sense of old, even ancient church music.

As a teacher, Siegfried Thiele has had an impact in the eastern part of Germany comparable to that of Rudolf Wagner-R�geny after World War II. His thorough grasp of the subject, cheerfulness of demeanor and adept methodology also contribute to the high esteem that Thiele has enjoyed in the public eye. But it was only the democratic changes emanating from Leipzig in autumn 1989 that enabled him to be elected rector of the Musikhochschule in the following summer. Thiele found models for his close interplay of composition, performance and teaching particularly in Paul Hindemith, B�la Bart�k and Carl Orff. The confessional aspect of Thiele's oeuvre is evident in each of his works.

Playing the piano was for Aaron Copland one of the necessities of life, like eating or breathing. Wherever he was there was always a piano somewhere near. Even during conversations and interviews, so it is said, his fingers used to move involuntarily on the table-top like on an imaginary keyboard. And it is in piano works that Copland's compositional development found it's culmination again and again. The "Passacaglia" is his very first large-scale work, and the 5"Piano Fantasy" can be regarded as his most ambitious, most extensive composition in the field of absolute music, a work in which he sums up and concentrates many characteristics of his musical style in a late work. American musician Nina Tichman has been particularly interested in contemporary compositions and their roots in traditional music for the piano. The music of Sch�nberg and Debussy, whose complete piano works she has presented cyclically (also released on the WERGO label), as well as that of contemporary American composers such as Copland and Elliott Carter, plays a central role in her repertoire.

This release presents the audiovisual work of 2016 Giga-Hertz Award winner Curtis Roads. Roads is considered one of the most innovative developers of the granular compositional technique and has not only caused a sensation as a composer, but also as an author and the editor of the Computer Music Journal (1978-2000). His music consistently embraces a technological, mathematically-based aesthetic. Roads aptly describes this style as pulsar and granular music, a music composed of many extremely short individual sound particles (grains or pulses). The result of his artistic work is an intense sensual experience, which can best be described as ordered complexity.

The significance of the seven pieces brought together here is that they both generate a striking panorama of the intelligence of the material presented, over a period of four years, from 1939 to 1943, by the composer whom the critic Fred Goldbeck described as "the greatest Giraudouxian of our age", and clarify in an extraordinarily oblique manner the prehistory of this "automation" of the creative act, towards which one can detect the perpetual temptation in the young Cage.

Concord, Mass., 1840-1860, this is the subtitle of Charles Ives's second piano sonata. It refers to the town of Concord in the American state of Massachusetts and to the years in which Concord was the focal point of an intellectual movement commonly called "Transcendentalism", which continues to influence the spiritual life of America even today: In the battle against the dominance of Rationalism and Empiricism, Transcendentalism, with it's mystical and philosophical characteristics as well as it's social criticism, emphasized the self-reliance of the individual. Charles Ives was familiar from childhood on with the teachings and literature of the Transcendentalists, shared many of their ideas, and sought to realize them as a businessman and composer in his public as well as private life. Artistically, politically, morally, and philosophically, these ideas represented his intellectual home; all his life, musically and in his literary essays, he dealt with the legacy of Transcendentalism. This is why he named the four movements of his 'Concord Sonata' after famous persons from the circle of the Transcendentalists: "The whole is an attempt to present (one person�s) impression of the spirit of transcendentalism. This is undertaken in impressionistic pictures of [Ralph Waldo] Emerson and [Henry David] Thoreau, a sketch of the [Bronson Amos] Alcotts, and a scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of [Nathaniel] Hawthorne." (Charles Ives)

The productions of the CD series Edition ZKM, ranging from digital synthesis and algorithmic composition to the integration of live electronics, from radio art to sound installation, encompass a broad spectrum of that locus where digital technology stimulates musical fantasy. "Karas. Kr�hen" is a musical-emotional attempt to make sense of that which, in Asia as well as in the Western world since days of old, has been attributed to ravens. Mayumi Miyata proves her mastery on the Japanese sho by playing the traditional court music Gagaku (sounds that come out of silence and return to it again) and St�bler's virtuosic compositions. Gerhard St�bler: voice / Mayumi Miyata: sho / Johannes Nied: double bass / Thomas Oesterdiekhoff: percussion.

This recording is an especially good demonstration of how Awankana's music is always open to new influences. Here it is the tonal language of avant-garde music that is integrated naturally into rich music that is closely connected to nature.

"May the wind blow and bring you to me" goes the title song of CD Sorene. Sorene, the wild bird in the national colors of green, red, and yellow, is not just a potential hit song by the contemporary azmari Seleshe, who works in a tradition over a thousand years old, but is also a hymn to the new. Seleshe Demassae, singer-poet, krar player, and composer, awakens the musical traditions of his homeland in twenty-one musical tales, along with children from Addis Abeba, the drummer Souleymane Toure, and friends from Berlin's Ethiopian community.

Awankana - the somewhat "mythical" pseudonym of the founder and head of a genuine, spiritually and holistically orientated Educational Center and meeting place of the Ashkay Foundation, in the countryside near Buenos Aires. Awankana, tireless traveller, founder and inspirator of the place, realizes his concept of a healthy and integrated way of living. A touch of poetry lies over the "place" Awankana and the ever-lasting desire of men for Paradise.

The Tunisian singer, oud player, and composer Lotfi Bouchnak is one of Tunisia's most famous musicians. His repertoire includes both classical Arabic songs, which are mostly forgotten even in his homeland, and popular genres. He has an impressively powerful voice that makes it possible for him to produce many variants and modulations. This enables him to reinterpret his famous predecessors, like Sayesd Darwish, Zakariya Ahmad, and Salah Abdel Hay. But Lotfi Bouchnak has also had success with his own works. This CD, Bouchnak's first to be published outside of Arab lands, contains primarily classical Arab songs but also some popular titles.

The Chopi are one of Mozambique's smaller ethnic populations. Their music for large xylophone ensembles, however, can be considered one of the most spectacular and complex forms of artistic expression on the African continent. Venancio Mbande is one of the last authentic representatives of this tradition. His compositions follow in the long history of mgodo, the ceremonial music for the elders and council members, the so-called chiefs of the Chopi.

Enno Poppe approaches electroacoustic music with an attitude that could be called "sympathetic skepticism." Although he has been involved since his student days with programming and a wide variety of electroacoustic techniques and instruments (also in his role as a conductor), not one of his compositions until now has been "purely" electronic. In "Rundfunk for nine synthesizers" Enno Poppe uses historical sounds - not historical instruments; the instrumentation consists of nine Computers and nine keyboards. The sounds come from the l960s and 70s: FM synthesis, Minimoog and Piganino. Because no original instruments are used, only computer-generated reconstructions, everything sounds different from the way it did then. The sound is deconstructed and reassembled. The players are not keyboard virtuosos, but rather virtuosos in the use of electronic sounds. Enno Poppe's "Rundfunk" celebrates musicians and the act of performing, and thus could be called "post-digital" music. It returns human physicality to electronic music in the bodies of those performing it.

Tempo, virtuosity, varied and original arrangements leave the listener no time for sentimentality or sleepy contentedness. The group Acoustic, which formed in 1975 and has performed with stars like Dire Straits, Chris de Burgh, and BAP, changed it's concept to "spirit music" and moved closer to meditative music in which folk, jazz, and classical music are combined.