Enormous technical requirements make John Cage's "Etudes Boreales" a highly virtuosic work, which requires an extreme sensitivity of feeling for the coordination of fingers, instrument, and intellect. On this CD it is presented in versions: for piano solo and later for cello solo with piano solo. As in the sister works, "Etudes Australes" and "Freeman Etudes", Cage based the "Etudes Boreales" on a star chart. He used the chart of the northern sky that the Czech astronomer Anton�n Becv�r made in 1962. The time length piece 26'1.1499' - Friedrich Gauwerky chooses the first 640.3 seconds for this recording, thus giving the piece the titel 10'40.3' - documents the composer's retreat from an intentional determination of the sounds. And also the "Harmonies" welcome the creative possibilities of whatever happens next.

Johannes Kreidler is a German composer and conceptual artist. He studied composition and music theory at the Freiburg University of Music and at the Institute of Sonology (computer music) at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. This portrait centers on Kreidler's collage works. The pieces here represent the starting point for his musical/conceptual art and express the idea of "music with music," where he samples music and combines it with new sounds to give it new context. In order to adequately depict the diversity and visual aspects of Kreidler's work, a bonus DVD is included.

In an age of visual and acoustic overstimulation, it seems necessary to me to sensitize perception through our 'most divine organ' - the ear - and to make us conscious again of silence as an important musical element. Out of silence emerges strength, an inner strength that seems increasingly important to me given the threats to world peace. (Harald Weiss) "There is a certain internal order to be found in every melody of every musical piece. In the ancient world, this was explained by the term 'Nomos', meaning not only order and regularity, but also musical tune or melody. To us, 'Nomos' means bringing alive the internal structures of every work we play, allowing them to become tangible to our audiences." (Nomos-Quartett)

In his compositions, Jay Schwartz (born in California, now living in Cologne) works with the aspects of the physics of sound and utilizes tonality in the context of the physics of organic harmony, making use of the overtone spectrum, microtonality, and glissandi in a poetic context with a captivating sensuous drawing power and an unabashed emotional disposition. Schwartz integrates these acoustical events in a clear, deliberately prolonged, coherent form, which generates a persistent metamorphosis as well as a conscious dramatic plan. Schwartz's homogeneous instrumentations, as in "Music for Orchestra" for string orchestra, uphold his ideas of clarity, simplicity and of organic sound.

As a jazz guitarist with a background in architecture, Matthias Ockert gets ideas for his works from the art of interior design, transferring spatial structures to music. A student of Wolfgang Rihm and Hanspeter Kyburz, Ockert combines a distorted electric guitar with flute and violin, and places succinctly rhythmic passages next to synthetic sound surfaces. On this portrait from Wergo, Ockert's music combines contemporary ensemble music, jazz music and electronic composition. The majority of the works released here are new productions recorded at the Centre for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe and are world premiere recordings.

Music-making for Hindemith included from the beginning performance and interpretation as well as the composition of music. Hindemith recalled: "As I began to compose, I had to overcome significant obstacles (my father opposed in every way what he regarded as a useless occupation), but this only made me work harder and brought me amazingly far in a relatively short period of time." The result of this development can be heard from the new CD in the series "Edition Paul Hindemith" which contains works for piano four-hands or two pianos. Andreas Grau (b. 1965) and G�tz Schumacher (b. 1966) have been a piano duo for over 15 years. Numerous prizes (among others the Prize of the German Music Council in 1989, Jeunesses Musicales 1989, the Bellini Competition 1991, and the Schubert Competition in Graz 1992) led early on to an extensive concert career both in Germany and abroad. From the beginning curiosity and openness characterized their artistic conception. CD recordings for various labels have been specially recognized by "Le Monde de la musique" and "Diapason".

In an interview, the composer Sergej Newski remembered, "The voice was the ideal path for finding my own idiom. In the late 1990s I began to transfer expressive vocal sounds into syntactic systems that obstruct their expressivity. I set out to find the primordial element of the voice." This recording includes his works Blindenalphabet, Alles and J'etais d'accord performed by the Ensemble Mosaik and Arbeitsfle�che performed by the ensemble MusikFabrik.

In music, the subjection and domestication of Nature through civilization takes the form of the subjection of the material, of a rational ordering system for our acoustical universe, the creation and hierarchical structuring of musical parameters on the one hand and the degradation of the resonating body to a musical instrument on the other. Thomalla sabotages the objectification of our musical discourse. Time and again he starts at these two chinks in our epistemological armor. He causes our ordering systems to grind and stutter, audibly throwing sand into the gearbox. This is underscored by the physical exertion which his technically difficult chamber music, which is collected on this CD, imposes on the performers. The aim of Thomalla's composing is to lend speech to physicality itself, and to listen to it. His compositional strategies have taught him that his own language lies in the freedom to adopt foreign tongues. (Sergio Morabito)

Hans G Helms's book "Fa: m' Ahniesgwow" which has become a legend of the avant-garde moves in the borderland between literature and musical composition. In his work the author critically examines the structures of the continuing fascistoid society and takes a look at the era of economically miraculous consumer stress. Helms observes social and politico-economic phenomena, combines the things he has seen and experienced with the parameters of semantics, phonetics and grammar, using - strictly speaking - the language to compose. The integral recording of Helms's opus was accomplished by the SprachKunstTrio [SpeechArtTrio] sprechbohrer in 2009 after several years of examination of the work - sixty years after Helms had completed his work on the book. Due to intensive communication with Hans G Helms, a high degree of interpretive authenticity has been achieved.

J�rg Mainka, which is dedicated to the Contemporary Music Edition of the German Music Council this portrait CD, is a composer who offers rooms his dreams. When J�rg Mainka his work is not decouple as music theorist from composing, the one without the other unthinkable. His commitment to conceptual thinking is very focused on the identification, the vision of contexts. The look is vibrant with him to discourse, from different directions, from unexpected perspectives. Composing not as counterplay on the theory (because often topsy-turvy world), but: thence comes it and then executes it. A stroke of luck, not only for his students because Mainka lust has retained the playfulness.

The recording of Paul Hindemith's string quartets by the world-famous Juilliard String Quartet - with founder-member Robert Mann (who left the ensemble after the 1996/97 season) as first violinist - has been completed. The third CD is now available. The CD contains a real "jewel": Hindemith's first quartet op. 2 which remained totally unknown unless it was published in 1994; whereas his fourth quartet op. 22 - performed 127 times just by Hindemith's ensemble in the 1920s, the Amar Quartet - is by far the most popular piece in it's repertoire! German Record Critics' Award for the complete recording of Hindemith's string quartets by the Juilliard String Quartet! The CD was awarded the Quarterly German Record Critics' Award!

Xilin Wang is one of China's most important composers. He is characterized by his expressive, effective compositional style (and his subversive tendencies). He studied composition and conducting at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and was awarded the highest Chinese state prize in 1963. However, following his criticism of Mao's cultural policy, Wang was sentenced to 14 years of exile and forced labor, during which he suffered persecution and torture. After the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1978, Wang returned to Beijing and became acquainted with the music of the European avant-garde. Since then, he has incorporated sequencing, minimalism, tone clusters and folkloristic elements into his works, such as the important "Symphony No. 3". The four-movement work is considered a "serious meditation" on the ten-year-long inhumane "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" and was written under the impression of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Wang dedicates it "to the people with lofty ideals who pursue democracy and freedom all over the world". "I do not wish to write for myself alone, but to depict this long history and the many aspects of humanity it encompasses; I compose for all those who have died." Symphony (literally: "sounding together") - Wang gives new life and unexpected force to this supposedly outdated genre. Xiling Wang's "Symphony No. 3" was recorded in a first-class performance by the China National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Swiss conductor Emmanuel Siffert and can be regarded as exemplary in terms of interpretation.

In Farzia Fallah's music, all ears are focused on the sound. It is both the core and the shell of every acoustic process, its beginning and end. From this consistent approach, the Iranian-born composer develops different, mostly filigree structures and forms. This reflects Fallah's idea of music that speaks through sound, but is difficult to verbalize, as she explains in the booklet text: "For me, art is a kind of reflection, but it is difficult to speak literally about the content. I believe that there is content in every work of art, but linguistically we can only approach it by analyzing and describing it. There is always a distance.

In her search for sound, Fallah draws on various line-ups for the CD portrait: it begins with Benedikt Bindewald's multi-layered violin playing in "… und dann befreit…?", gradually expanding the range of instruments over the course of the album. In addition to Tobias Klich's and Henrik Dewes' guitars in "täglicher Blick auf den Alborz," a trio from Ensemble S201 ("Ausgedehnter Augenblick," online only), the Sonar Quartet ("Holz-Haar-Atem-Licht"), the six-piece ensemble DEHIO ("im selben Augenblick"), and the Ensemble Aventure as a nonet ("Unter Bewunderung der Farben") have their say.

If there is a common thread in Stefan Keller’s extremely varied music, it is probably not anything in the realm of style, form, or choice of materials, but rather a concept of music in which the idea of “performative presence” plays a significant role. For him, music is “a form of intensive communication encompassing all of the senses and the physical involvement of the listeners”. The physical appeal of Keller’s compositions can be seen most clearly in his affinity for rhythm. There is hardly a composition, in which percussion instruments don’t play an important role.

Keller’s complexly structured sound processes effortlessly mix elements from pop, electronic, and non-European music. His use of phenomena from a broad range of musical traditions does not treat the use of referential material as an ironic game with allusions and quotations but instead as a continuation and evolution of the material’s energetic potential. Keller once described this as “making the impact of the newly contextualized music one’s own.” Ensemble Ascolta presents on this album four very different works from the highly virtuosic solo “Stück für Klavier” [Piece for Piano] to “hybrid gaits”, written for Ascolta’s unusual instrumental formation.

Extreme expression and fragile beauty meet in the music of Jonah Haven. The composer understands his work as an exploration of his own life and existentially human experiences such as despair, loss and isolation. Driven by a constant search for the new, Haven draws from a broad palette of sounds. In the mostly small-scale works of the portrait, there are microtonal shifts in the accordion duet "i burn a million years," for example. Elsewhere, remnants of tonal, traditional music shine through under distorted and perforated sounds generated largely by multiphonics, as in "slip letting by hand," a duet for violin and cello.

Many of the pieces audibly push the musicians to their physical limits, as in "aren't wet" for prepared bassoon and violin with prepared bow, in which the two dissimilar instruments converge sonically through the preparations and amplification. In the large ensemble piece "gasser," likewise the title of this portrait, high registers and the lack of pauses for breath create a barely avoidable “gasping” when the instrumentalists take in air. Booklet author Gordon Kampe resumes: "In ‘gasser’, supposedly austere beauty tilts into a human – because imperfect – beauty through various sonic contaminations, a process which links nearly all the pieces with each other."