As early as the 1960s WERGO made a name for themselves as a contemporary music label with outstanding recordings released under the title of �studio reihe neuer musik�. Now WERGO releases these gems from their early years, these highlights of 20th-century music history, in an excellent sound quality on CD for the first time. His �Momente� [Moments] for soprano, four choral groups, and thirteen instrumentalists have not been designed as a fixed work with a clearly defined beginning, formal structure, and ending but as a composition of independent events with multiple meanings: For example, the individual groups of moments should be combined for certain performances of the work in such a way that they form their own version � in accordance with the given duration of programme and sound means. As soon as the arrangement of the moments has been determined and the performance material been set accordingly, certain moments are to be "inserted" in their neighbouring moments as well, to �remember� earlier ones or �announce� moments still to come. Premiered on 21 May 1962, the composition underwent some changes in the following years which led to several variants, with this CD presenting "Version 1965".A.

On his portrait recording Matthias Krüger searches for truth and identity. In his works, musical and non-musical elements and quotations fuse into a steady stream. This results in a seemingly never ending musical network of associations. The composer refers likewise to classical music, old philosophy and pop culture. According to booklet author Bastian Zimmermann: „In Krüger’s music, nothing is safe from becoming the beginning or the end of a musical idea.” The ensemble piece “le vide à perdre” incorporates impressions from a night at a club in Istanbul – a liberation of oneself in ecstasy, played with great commitment by the Ensemble Ascolta conducted by Nicholas Kok. “Wie ein Stück Fett (Redux)”, a piece written for the Ensemble BRuCH, deals with excerpts from Gustav Meyrink’s novel The Golem using rough humor. The orchestra piece “Bellygoat Boom (substrate)”, commissioned by West German Radio (WDR) and conducted by Elena Schwarz, was influenced by cultural and artistic practices of the Maori that Krüger experienced in New Zealand. The audio version of “sweep over me them dusty bristles” played by the Ensemble Inverspace is available online exclusively. Additionally, the specific video choreographed by Eddie Martinez and produced by Rikisaburo Sato is at disposal on the vimeo channel of Edition Zeitgenössische Musik. It toys with retro aesthetics that mirror the electro swing appeal of the music. Distinctively, Krüger weaves fundamental questions of humankind and human striving into it.

Karlheinz Stockhausen was one of the foremost proponents of the radical “music of the future” envisioned by young composers after the horrors and destruction of World War II. In 1955, Stockhausen declared that music would have to be created anew amid the rubble of the past. His Klavierstücke I-XI for piano are not based on a linear belief in progress, but on a personal mix of scientific knowledge and religious conviction. The underlying theme of this music is the tension between objectively measured time and our subjective experience of time. Stockhausen deliberately restricted himself to a single instrument, believing that the neutrality and universality of the piano’s sound allowed a comprehensive and transparent exploration of sound colors and structures. In Sabine Liebner’s precise and sensitive interpretation, the fascination of these piano pieces is apparent. The intensity of the individual sound events and our experience of the dual nature of time allow us to truly “hear” – the ultimate goal of Stockhausen’s art.

What happens if the composer and the listener are the same person? This is exactly what Jo Kondo’s way of composing implies. If the composer is to be nothing but a curious listener, he must be able to surprise himself. He must rid himself of all prior knowledge or intention. Born in Tokyo in 1947, Jo Kondo was influenced throughout his entire education almost exclusively by traditional Western art music. Like so many of his Western colleagues, he feels this to be both a limitation and the greatest challenge to the creative process. “The music one grows up with is like a cage one has to break out of.” The type of improvisation that Jo Kondo employs is only loosely related to improvisation as it is commonly understood. Kondo does not improvise using an instrument, but with music paper, note by note. “I write down the first note, which can be anything, and then I try to listen to it again and again in my head until the second note appears. Then I write it down, and then I listen to these two notes again and again until the third note comes up. And then, repeating this process, I always go back to the top of the music to find the next note. That means that when I have 150 notes already in succession on my paper, I find number 151 by going back to the top of the piece and listening through from the top to the 150th note to find the next note. That’s what I mean by improvisation.” - Jo Kondo All of Jo Kondo’s pieces have been written using this method. The result is a completely linear music that avoids any kind of obvious phrasing, melody, or motivic development, permitting the individual note to retain “its own entity of life”. Since even a musical line can endanger this fragile autonomy, Kondo distributes the notes among the various instrumental parts. This “hocket” technique, which has been used since the thirteenth century, demands enormous rhythmic virtuosity from the performers to avoid disrupting the organic unity of the extremely fragmented line. Thus, there is space left for the listener to create his own phrasing out of it.

Energetic as well as poetic is Karola Obermüller’s music, and it reveals hidden and unknown elements underneath the multilayered musical material. Many of the works on this portrait album in the series Edition Zeitgenossische Musik were developed as work in progress during a long period of time. Distinctive for Obermüller’s work are therefore the reflection from several perspectives and the superposition of different layers of sound. Zooming in on musical details is another special feature in several of her pieces as in “Pulstastung” for example. Here the distances between the musical occurrences are going to be extended more and more, “with an increasing pulse at the same time” (Karola Obermüller). Obermüller is receiving a special inspiration by ancient poetic texts as from the greek poet Sappho. Here she finds the essences of human existence like light and night, eros and longing. In „Untergegangen der Mond“ and „…silbern.“ her music tries “to create moments of magic“ (Volker Blumenthaler). In “Myrmecia” microtonal shiftings are confronted with percussive making of sound, which are creating a “strange, crackling, and insisting stream of sound”, the composer compares to the wild activity of the primordial ant, the title is derived from. The instrumentation of the pieces on this album offer a panorama from solo pieces for bass flute (Camilla Hoitenga) or piano (Emanuele Arciuli) and an extraordinary instrumentation with guitar, hammered dulcimer and harp (International Contemporary Ensemble) arriving at big pieces for ensemble (Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Musikfabrik).

On this portrait the Chinese composer Huihui Cheng presents a multi-colored spectrum of playful, mysterious and unreal sounds which are produced both by instrumental/vocal and electronic means. To feature intermedia elements of her work, like dance, performance and video installation, the recording is supplemented with videos and a smartphone game. The works of Huihui Cheng lie in a field of tension between old and new. Titles as “Narcissus & Echo” or “Calling sirens” are borrowed from ancient Greece. On the other hand, the musical language is fresh and is implemented by contemporary means as electronic and video feed. The connection between apparently antithetical or remote things is a central thought in Huihui Cheng‘s work. Expanded sound-sources play an important role in several compositions. The snakelike hair of the soloist in “Me Du Ça” consists of tubes as extensions of the body. Sounds are produced by blowing or scratching and others are triggered, as filters, amplification or delays. Likewise, the sound generation in the piano solo “Messenger“ does not work in conventional manner but through an item of clothing which is connected directly with the strings and brings them into vibration. Booklet author Lydia Jeschke writes that communication is a central topic despite diverse means: “communication, whether between the performers, between humans and machines, or with the audience.“ The composer is particularly interested in social interactions in form of games and similarities to music. In “Your turn” the vocal ensemble is playing a card game. The course is certainly not accidentally but rather obeys concrete compositional specifications. The audience actively takes part in the game as well.

The music of the composer Zeynep Gedizlioglu (born in Izmir) is like a kaleidoscope of diverse moments - sometimes fragile, sometimes harsh-angular, then again expressive and culminating in virtuoso sound ecstasies. A central motivation force of Gedizlioglu‘s music is the reaching out for the ineffable, as Dirk Wieschollek writes in the booklet of the album: “shapes solidify, contours emerge, often in imperceptible variants or shifts among things already heard, only to vanish once again.“ The perception of the world and herself, the shift between distance and approximation and the search for relations and non-relations are characteristic of the work of the composer. The alternation between antagonisms play an important role in Gedizlioglu’s work, among others in “Verbinden und Abwenden” (Connect and Reject). The composition in three acts for orchestra and ensemble places the individual opposite the collective and questions the role assignments of both, the orchestra and the ensemble. The musicians of the ensemble are spread amidst the orchestra as soloists, like “foreign objects” in unrelated instrumental families. “Kelimeler” (Words), the only vocal composition of this portrait, searches for possibilities and impossibilities of artistic speech. Based on a Turkish text which was written by the composer herself the piece focuses on “darkness” and “voice” once whispering, speaking, breathing heavily, in impulsive outbursts or linear melisma. With these recordings Zeynep Gedizlioglu presents herself both with chamber music and large compositions for ensemble and orchestra. Formations like the hr-Sinfonieorchester, Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien, Quatuor Diotima and the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart can be heard on this release.

"...milestone in the Hindemith discography..." (Musikmarkt) The renowned Juilliard String Quartet has recorded three consecutive albums of Paul Hindemith's string quartet works on the label WERGO - in the legendary formation with Robert Mann, Joel Smirnoff, Samuel Rhodes, and Joel Krosnick. These recordings trace the full breadth of the stylistic development of one of the great composers of the 20th century. The complete recording of the string quartets with the Juilliard String Quartet was awarded the "German Record Critics Annual Award 1998".

Enjott Schneider is one of the most productive and successful composers of our time. Instead of chasing after the elusive goal of progressivity like many of his colleagues, he looks for common ground with people of different cultures, for universal musical values that transcend geography and history. Schneider first achieved international fame as the composer of hundreds of scores for films such as “Herbstmilch” (1989), “Schlafes Bruder” (1995), or “Bibi Blocksberg und das Geheimnis der blauen Eulen” (2004), but his orchestral works also have a richly varied narrative quality that is documented in WERGO’ s series of recordings dedicated to his music. Featuring internationally acclaimed soloists Lukasz Dlugosz and – in the double concerto – Agata Kielar-Dlugosz, this newest recording presents multi-faceted compositions for flute and orchestra. Common to all of them is a narrative tone that evokes the spirit of forests and water as well as the legendary ancient Chinese concubine and Imperial consort Yang Guifei, who is credited with the cultivation and popularization of flute playing in courtly circles. The Asian atmosphere of the final work on the recording creates a bridge to the double concerto at the beginning, where “water” is explicitly used as a metaphor for Daoism. Western symphonic music is united here with Chinese harmonies and melodic shapes.

In 1985 György Ligeti produced an entire volume of piano etudes, to which he added two further volumes in the following sixteen years. Quite a few people in New Music circles then reacted with a lack of appreciation and understanding: Whereas the lively piano etude tradition of the 19th century - inextricably linked with Czerny, Chopin or Liszt - was continued by Bartók, Debussy or Stravinsky at the beginning of the 20th century, this tradition no longer existed by the end of the 20th century. The etude appeared to be a relic from another time. Ligeti had various reasons for these compositions: He was concerned to revive a great musical tradition and to explore its potential in a contemporary form. Furthermore he liked to play the piano himself, although with "inadequate pianistic technique", as he once remarked. Apparently, it was sufficient to create some of the most difficult works for piano in the entire piano repertoire: "The anatomical situation of my hands and the configuration of the piano keyboard determined the products of my imagination." His piano etudes have also to be seen in the context of his admiration for the great piano literature from Bach to Debussy. Furthermore they are exercises in polyphonic writing and playing technique, with polyphony here having to be understood in a considerably expanded sense. For Ligeti's piano writing is not only polyphonic in the customary sense, but also polyrhythmic, poly-temporal, and even poly-ethnic (he uses material from very different European and non-European musical cultures - from the Balkans via Africa to Asia). In the end, his piano etudes are considerably more than mere technical exercises. Each piece is at the same time a poetic miracle, transcending its given musical and technical tasks.

In 1976, Morton Feldman accepted a commission from the opera in Rome for the opera Neither. The works Orchestra, Elemental Procedures and Routine Investigations, represented a "triology" for Feldman with which he prepared himself for the work on his opera. In all thre epieces, Feldman uses a characteristic complex of material, clearly differentiated from his previous type of textural treatment and inserted as a fixed element into the course of the music.

Music is seldom unadulterated. The aesthetic process – both of composition and of perception – is almost always influenced by extra-musical phenomena. Historical, physical, and ethnological forces have “gotten in the way” of the compositions on this album, determining the values between the sounds, the crossings into those musical realms where hearing becomes, in the best sense of the word, unclear. In Vassos Nicolaou's ensemble piece "Farbenmaschinen“ structurally completely different tonal layers continuously interact with each other, whereas Johannes Schoellhorn's "Pièces croisées" is like a musical shell game of memories. Sound and notated noise collide in Gerard Grisey's "Partiels", and Dieter Mack's "Kammermusik V" points to intercultural communication problems and even speechlessness. Richter, one of the most important living German artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.

It is less well known that Gerd Zacher was also an excellent composer, since he long withheld his compositions from the public. His cycle for organ, “Die Kunst der Fuge”, was released in 1990 (WER 61842), but most of his works remain to be discovered, and WERGO is now proud to present posthumously a second portrait album: “Event(ualitie)s”. The music is fascinating and full of surprises. These are the first recordings of all the works on the album, most of which were prepared in consultation with either Zacher himself or his longtime companion, composer Juan Allende-Blin. A central artistic question for Zacher was always the relationship between composition and improvisation, notation and interpretation. The solo and duo works on this double album were composed over a span of more than fifty years. They are for the most part precisely notated, but there are also passages that leave broad discretion to the performer, as in “75 Event(ualitie)s”, dedicated to John Cage. The duo compositions in particular give a lively impression of Zacher’s ability to create a musical dialogue between spontaneity and consideration.

Using sounds to animate thoughts – indeed to “make them dance” – is one of Violeta Dinescu’s fundamental creative motivations. “For me, it is very important that I am moved by music and that I can use music to move others. Music can release something that is out of my control.” Violeta Dinescu’s works for solo flute open up a “wonderland” of sounds. The cycle “Aus dem Tagebuch” is a striking example of this. Along with the five “Blicke” (Glimpses) for two to nine flutes, the five “diary entries” are interspersed among the other works on this release to create a dramaturgical sequence. What these miniatures have in common is an expressive character that is strongly metaphorical and associative, able to translate the turbulent mood of the diary entries into clear mental images. The gestural and mimicking aspects are underscored by experimental sounds and unorthodox playing techniques such as flutter tongue, breath noises, overblown harmonics, multiphonics, glissandos, various kinds of vibrato, and pitchless sounds. Just as the five “diary entries” are, in Dinescu’s words, “little excursions into the world of the soul,” the “glimpses” allow us a similar view – the musical material of both pieces is closely related. However, while the diary entries place the “world of the soul” under a magnifying glass, the glimpses look at this world from the “distance of memory.”

Trio Omphalos has been performing original and exciting programs with new music since it was founded in 2006 – with the rare lineup of clarinet, drums and piano. The trio discovered John Cage’s “Chess Pieces” in 2012, a graphic image composition by Cage that the pianist Margret Lang Tan translated into a piano version. Trio Omphalos has created an expressive and colourful trio version out of this transcription. Tom Johnson’s graceful and wonderful Rational Melodies build the bridge between compositions of John Cage. The lucid, joyous questioning of music is at the core of Tom Johnson’s own composition as well. As with "Rational Melodies“, "Chess Pieces“ lends itself to being divided among different instruments, and one can hear in both recordings how creative Trio Omphalos has been in their arrangements. In each ‘rational melody’ Johnson applies a single process to a simple, formal musical idea - adding notes, subtracting notes, counting notes, expanding phrases, contracting phrases, adding rhythmic complexity – and then stands back from the process, as it fills out the melody over time.