Philippe Manoury is one of the most prominent compositional voices in France today, and this WERGO recording of his "Lab. Oratorium" presents one of Manoury's most significant works. Not only is the piece a fascinating exploration of sound color with more than 250 performers, it was inspired by the innovative architecture of many new concert halls (such as Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie with it's evocation of ships and the sea). And perhaps most importantly, the work deals with themes that are urgently relevant in our troubled times. Working together with director Nicolas Stemann, Manoury composed the piece for Cologne's G�rzenich Orchestra as a completely new kind of concert experience, a Gesamtkunstwerk combining theater, oratorio, live electronics, and spatial composition. "Lab. Oratorium" was conceived as an independent work, but it also marks the high point and conclusion of a trilogy of monumental spatial works for orchestra including the prize-winning compositions "In Situ" and "Ring". "Lab. Oratorium" is Manoury's moving artistic response to one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time: the drowning deaths of countless refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. The idea of a modern "Odyssey" is made heartbreakingly clear through conversations with members of maritime rescue teams. Sabine Grenard (SOS Me�diterrane�e) collected eyewitness reports that were integrated into the work.

The enthusiasm for Mikis Theodorakis' songs has remained unabated. WERGO now releases a new album with some his most famous song compositions, sung by Mikis Theodorakis himself! The present release contains 12 compositions by the great Greek composer, some of which were written during the Papadopoulos dictatorship in the years 1967-74. In his exile, Theodorakis rearranged texts of his own and texts of other modern Greek poets to produce these compositions. The songs are timeless, lyrical, yet also political and have lost none of their topicality: 'I was fortunate to work with outstanding poets so that the texts and messages of my songs can be regarded as timeless.' (Mikis Theodorakis)

Marco Stroppa views composition as musical research and is constantly aware of the dual nature of artistic thought, "the discourse about the thought and the thought itself." On this release, the Ensemble KNM Berlin explores the topological qualities of the sound worlds in three of Stroppa's chamber music works. All three pieces demonstrate Marco Stroppa's highly sensitive experimentation with sounds at the threshold of audibility. As a philosopher of sound, all sonorities are for him instruments of epistemology; as a musical poet, he tells stories with sensual, tactile, dynamic, and constantly changing sounds, the interpretation of which is always left up to the individual listener. The string quartet "Un Segno nello Spazio" (1994) deals with the idea of a sign in space that undergoes an intense increase of density, making the three-dimensionality of the space palpable. In the seven miniature movements of "Hommage � Gy. K." for clarinet, viola, and piano (1997-2003), Stroppa honors the Hungarian composer Gy�rgy Kurt�g. The performers repeatedly change their positions on the stage, creating differing effects which can be experienced purely acoustically thanks to skillfully managed microphone placement and audio mastering. In "Osja, Sieben Strophen f�r eine literarische Drohne" (2005/2013) for violin, violoncello, and piano, Stroppa reflects on the life of the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky through two of his poems.

Winterges�nge by Harald Weiss was composed between 1984 and 1986 in Schreyahn, a small place in northern Germany as well as in Rome, where Harald Weiss lived for one year on a scholarship at the German Academy "Villa Massimo". The cycle was written incidentally rather than by intention, as Harald Weiss says himself, long intervals interrupting the work. The instruments belong mostly to the percussion group and are supplemented or opposed by the human voice in it's various sound-colours. At a studio of the Hessischer Rundfunk Harald Weiss has recorded in playback not only the percussion parts but the vocal parts as well consist of elements sung and spoken. There is no text, words remain unintelligible, evoking at most some associations. However, Harald Weiss has written a couple of poems for his "Winterges�nge" which he describes as subjective, dissociated thoughts of the composer, like those programmatic titles, which Debussy put at the end of his pieces as aids to comprehension.

Produced in 1974 by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, this synthesis of Hermann Hesse's writing with Peter Michael Hamel's music, of spirituality and art, of sitar and church organ, of meditative sounds and jazz rhythms, of silence and passion remains unique today and in the meanwhile it has obtained a legendary reputation.

The paths of our thoughts, fantasies, and dreams are often convoluted. Since ancient times, the labyrinth has been a symbol of life itself with it's paths, crossroads, dead ends, and odysseys. Some such mazes, though full of nooks and crannies, have only one path, one goal, and one exit. Others offer various routes. Written in 2016/17 for saxophone quartet, "Po�tica del Laberinto" [Poetics of the Labyrinth] by the Spanish composer Alberto Posadas is a cycle about three particularly iconic labyrinths from ancient times to the present day. In contrast to his usual way of composing, these three pieces are also framed by freely determined paths of reminiscence and a successive evolution of the instrumental sound - from uniformity of four soprano saxophones through the diversity of four distinct registers to the dominance of the bass register at the end. Sigma Project or, in other words, the combined talents of Andr�s Gomis, �ngel Soria, Alberto Chaves, and Josetxo Silguero, is more than a saxophone quartet. It is a crucial conduit for the instrumental music of the 21st century. The group's joint research and experimentation with Alberto Posadas resulted in a new understanding of the saxophone's possibilities. In search of the sounds Posadas imagined, the players devised groundbreaking techniques to bring the composer's ideas to life - sounds that a saxophone had never made before.

Apart from an omission in the Credo, the work follows the traditional Latin text of the Ordinary of the Mass. Even though the liturgy, as form and as meaning, has long since ceased to be a “self-evident” part of our collective experience, a musical setting is still possible in the form of a personal enquiry, and one that is hesitantly hopeful. With our rationality firmly fixed on the “logic” of our present situation we are prepared to surrender the earth. Thus the search for a higher reason is at once utopian and essential for continued existence.

Robert Schumann and J�rg Widmann - a musical dialogue between a modern and a Romantic composer. WERGO juxtaposes four piano works of the two composers and takes a look at Schumann on his 200th birthday from a somewhat different perspective: His works "Nachtst�cke" and "Ges�nge der Fr�he" as well as Widmann's "Toccata" and eponymous sonata "Fleurs du mal" are interpreted by the Sicilian pianist Fabio Romano, whom the magazine Fono Forum has recently chosen as "best up-and-coming artist of the year". Seeing himself deeply rooted in the classical-Romantic tradition as a composer and interpreter, and regularly entering into a dialogue with Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert as a world-renowned clarinettist and experimental composer par excellence, J�rg Widmann has discovered in himself and developed a special affinity particularly towards the music by Robert Schumann. It is particularly in his chamber music works that Widmann repeatedly makes direct references to works of the great Romanticist; but there are also subtle hints at related moments: breaks - and bridges into the unknown, on either side. And not seldom are they fields of twilight, of nightmares, of the dark side of the Moon which are explored.

The music of Franz Martin Olbrisch is not intended to mean anything - it wants to be what it naturally is: an acoustical experience which becomes an artwork through the act of listening. He places the focus on one particular inherent aspect of the music, which he then exploits to the limit: the endless variety of sound. He frequently requires from interpreters complex or unusual ways of playing which produce unforeseeable combinations of sounds. The situation of the listener is also important, because it is impossible to follow simultaneously the often complex and many-faceted musical processes. Listeners must focus on particular aspects in order to register, perceive, and understand, in their own way, the piece as an artwork. Olbrisch does not consider the impossibility of controlling each detail of the interpretation and the listener's perception a deficit, but rather a necessary artistic characteristic - an approach which he developed further in his orchestral work "craquel�". Furthermore many of Olbrisch's works are therefore characterized by an engagement with the acoustical qualities of instruments and their specific sound-producing mechanisms. This approach is noticeable for example in his work "fl�te, sounds & live-electronics" in which he derives the basic compositional principles entirely from the fingering techniques of a standard transverse flute. For his orchestral work "Grain", Olbrisch uses computer-assisted procedures to analyse the significant features of the noise sequence produced by a drinks machine, from the insertion of the coin to the rattling delivery of the can. The material obtained therefrom is used for the orchestral parts. In "coupures de temps...", all instruments play in the same tempo, but nonetheless each part follows a different rhythmic subdivision of the basic pulse, so that different groupings take place simultaneously. Through this independent temporal organization of the individual instruments, there is a continuous divergence and convergence in the parts.

Legendary cabaret performer Georg Kreisler is known for his unparalleled catalog of chansons for which he penned both the lyrics and music, and for his concerts and recordings in which he sang and accompanied himself at the piano. He was until recently, not well-known as a composer of classical music. The publication of a book entitled "Georg Kreisler - Grenzg�nger" drew the attention of pianist Sherri Jones to Kreisler's early instrumental music and at the composer's behest she premiered the works. In 2011, inspired by Jones performances, Kreisler wrote F�nf Lieder, five connected pieces for mezzo-soprano, piano and violin, performed here by Olivia Vermeulen and Andreas Reiner.

The artistic credo of the renowned Canadian organ duo (and husband and wife) Sylvie Poirier and Philip Crozier is manifested in their exclusive commitment to interpretations of original works, supplemented by commissions from composers who have done concerted work with the performance possibilities and compositional demands of four-hand and four-foot organ performance. The present organ CD offers two works by Albrechtsberger and Wesley from the first half of the nineteenth century and works by contemporary composers with whom the performers work closely.

Klaus Ospald's Leopardi Cycle is based on the work of Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. Notable in all three works is a preference for low tonal regions, especially of the brass and woodwinds, augmented by deep percussion. Ospald uses the oscillations, beats and irritations of enharmonic to blur the sounds and make them dazzlingly unreal.

Anna Korsun's compositions explore unknown ground by repeatedly exploring aesthetic boundaries. Her portrait album in the series Edition Zeitgenossische Musik, presents five of these musical maps. With a wide variety of instrumentations, ranging from the extraordinary organ in the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Cologne to a vocal ensemble, she creates sophisticated, sometimes bizarre sound images, always surrounded by a fleeting aura. Embedded in a tense relationship of insatiable curiosity and compositional skill, Korsun develops literally unheard musical worlds. "Often she takes a single theme, idea or vision and pursues it into depths so profound as to become existential. Viewed from this vantage point, we can descry the defining features of her personal style: heedless of tradition, she seeks and finds the resources she needs for each particular project. Her sonic imagination knows practically no bounds", as described by Ingo Dorfm�ller. This "hazardous sound" (Ingo Dorfm�ller) is contrasted with a thoroughly traditional understanding of form, which lends her pieces an almost knock-on effect. Anna Korsun can be heard as a singer in numerous, especially recorded pieces for the portrait album. In addition, various renowned musicians perform on it, such as organist Dominik Susteck, guitarist Flavio Virz� or Johanna Zimmer and Andreas Fischer from the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart as well as the Ensemble Looptail.

The chamber music works of Detlev M�ller-Siemens presented here were created between 2002 and 2009. In them, the serenity and thoughtfulness of the form contrast with the inner turbulence that comes from a musical language that is "on it's own" and does not follow any pre-existing patterns. M�ller-Siemens said about his "String Trio" which he dedicated to the Mondrian Ensemble: "The first movement is torn, disjunct, often motoric, and in it's course characterized by sharply contrasting sections which are parts of several very different structural layers. In contrast, the second movement is more unified: a fragile, hesitant, ascending melody upon which a 'presto-lamento' passage is briefly superimposed toward the end." In the piano quartet "lost traces", also dedicated to the Mondrian Ensemble, "the music searches for traces in order to find it's way. It follows these traces, but loses them again, so that the music must pause, disoriented - moments in which the music seems to be entirely by itself and to have found itself - before taking up the search again." (M�ller-Siemens)

Besides the "Fantasy on Words from the Holy Scriptures" by Hans Huber, the founder of the Swiss Composers Union and most important Swiss composer of the 19th century, this CD presents an yet unpublished work by Rudolf Moser, furtheron two compositions by the member of the legendary "Les Six", Arthur Honegger, and Friedrich Klose's "Prelude and Doppelfuge" on themes by Anton Bruckner.