While Dimitri Terzakis has been living in Germany for almost half a century, he composes in a quite individual style, going back to the roots of his native coutry, Greece. Terzakis delved into the tonal system of ancient Greece and discovered undreamt of possibilities in the formation of melody and tonality beyond major and minor. Miicro-intervals and sliding pitches, as well as the realization of the infest dynamic nuances are important for melodic flexibility that is found in his music.

Visions and illusions, dreams and hallucinations were the inspiration for Enjott Schneider's surreal sound images: the current recording collects two double concertos by the Munich composer, both of which use unconventional combinations of solo instruments to make poetic contradictions audible. In "Isolde & Tristan" (2014), Erhu virtuoso Jiemin Yan as a fairy tale princess and cellist Wen-Sinn Yang as her hero and counterpart Richard Wagner interact in a far Eastern context. The fluid Asian timbre of the traditional Chinese instrument merges with the chromaticism of Late-Romantic Western music; original quotations from Wagner meet slow waltzes and Irish diatonic melodies. "Dreamdancers" (2016) explores the surreal worlds of the night. Sergei Nakariakov on Flugelhorn and Otto Sauter on Piccolo Trumpet play together in a collage-like manner characterized by leaps in time and superimposed tempos. They combine spectacular staccato technique with dizzying high notes to create a weightless dream full of feeling and beyond all reason.

Al Gromer Khan (born 1946) was influenced by growing up in England, Morocco, and India. In 1975, at the suggestion of his teacher, Imrat Khan, he was taken into a family of sitar players with an unbroken tradition going back to the seventeenth century, the age of the moguls. Al Gromer Khan's music is based on the artful decoration of traditional Indian ornaments that are placed in the context of electronic soundscapes. His fascination with the idea of "listening to music indirectly" joins with a poetic form of meditative music. When the wind moved at night, it brought fragments of sounds and melodies from the distance. "Music as a Perfume" - is sparsely and carefully measured, soft but capable of creating a powerful magic situation.

The second CD with Paul Hindemith’s string quartets - superbly interpreted by the renowned Juilliard String Quartet - has just been released. Samuel Rhodes writes in the liner notes of the CD: "My group, the Juilliard String Quartet, has been fascinated by the Hindemith quartets for some time. We are challenged by the depth of the musical content, the overflowing vitality, and the sophistication of compositional technique that exist in these works." 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!

“Fatal Harmonies is the seventh of ten volumes in Wergo’s continuing “Edition Enjott Schneider,” and contains five compositions for cello and orchestra. The cello has fascinated audiences, players, and composers for centuries, and inspired Enjott Schneider to create compositions of magic and virtuoso wizardry. In the hands of a soloist with the mastery of Laszlo Fenyo, an explosion of expressive power is guaranteed. The cello concerto “Dugud” takes up some of the legendary images about the ancient oriental bird god in archaic scenes like the dark and erotic battle of impregnation or the vision of a life of freedom. “Sulasmith” is about the Song of Solomon which is one of the Bible’s most mysterious texts. “Fatal Harmonies of Black Sweetness” refers to Carlo Gesualdo, one of the most daring and enigmatic composers in history. The present composition takes up the dark sweetness that dominates Gesualdo’s madrigals. Laszlo Fenyo, for whom many of the pieces were tailor-made, convinces with his ability to imbue hellishly difficult passages with musicality and beauty of sound. Fortunately, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and their conductor Ariel Zuckermann let themselves be inspired by Laszlo’s uncompromising enthusiasm and worked together with him to create a performance of the highest quality.

Pistol shots in the piano’s resonating chamber, passing cars, short quotations from Haydn; light music from the adjoining room, contrabass clarinet sounds recorded with microphones extremely far from the instrument and confronted with ambient noise from the environment: Hannes Seidl’s “Music for Above the Mantelpiece” is firmly rooted in the “mundane” here and now. Meant for home-listening, art music is interwoven with everyday noises; the pieces are quoting themselves, sounds are devaluated. This CD claims autonomy; it does not simulate a concert, it is not an image. The CD’s technical possibilities such as repetitions, jerky leaps in loudness, quotes, change of microphones etc. are used to broach the issue of the home-listening situation with its underlaying of urban noises such as yelling, cars, and pop music – in short: the intrusion of reality.In this sense, Seidl’s compositional approach responds to the ongoing changes in the way we perceive music, and seeks to re-establish contact with reality. The result is music that declines to draw its legitimacy from some externally defined form of sublimity or to wrest hidden “truths“ from its materials. Instead, it tries to make headway in our cultural discourse as a living, reality-based form of art.

In 1990 John Cage met sho player Mayumi Miyata, who requested he write a piece for the ancient Japanese mouth organ. Cage was deeply impressed by the sound of this instrument and in 1991 he wrote Two3 for sho and five water-filled conch shells - one of the so-called "Number Pieces" Cage worked on during the last years of his life. Although the sound of the piece's structure remains a mystery to rational thinking, it is directly accessible to sensory awareness - especially in the interpretation here played by accordion player Stefan Hussong and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei. Two3 for sho (a Japanese free reed musical instrument) and five water-filled conch shells (1991)

Grabbing vs. Releasing, self-assertion vs. ^#^surrender: the title juxtaposes seemingly irreconcilable opposites. But it is precisely this sense of antithesis that defines the force-field mapped out by Jens Joneleit's cycle for 27 soloists, "Le tout, le rien". In the instant between reading the title and hearing the first notes of the music, the expectant listener can imagine a wide-open space with a free constellation of potential sounds. How do they interrelate? Do they seek to merge into a whole, or do they drift apart into nothingness from the moment they are nudged? And what happens when the two processes happen to interlock and conflict? The listener is continuously tempted to think in terms of fresh starts. The piece evidently seeks a way to capture and illuminate each and every sonority in it's original state, if only for a fleeting instant. The result is an intractable flux that will neither countenance an interruption nor abandon it's interrogative impulse. "Le tout, le rien" was composed at the occasion of Ensemble Modern's 25th anniversary and first performed in Dresden in October 2005.

"Mystic Landscapes" is the eighth of 10 albums in WERGO’s continuing "Edition Enjott Schneider". The Rhine and the Black Forest are mystical and legendary landscapes that throughout the world are seen as inspirations for German Romanticism. Enjott Schneider conceived this recording as a tribute to these landscapes, not as illustrative program music, but as an attempt to capture a certain mood in sound. Both symphonies have a strongly biographical background and are musical embodiments of personal memories of the composer. Not without a certain tongue-in-cheek intent, the music in Symphony No. 5 "Black Forest Saga" sometimes takes on an archaic tone that presents the Black Forest in the context of films depicting Celtic legends. The choral effects are sometimes distilled into Romantic vocalises or onomatopoeic sounds like the whistling of the wind or the rustling of leaves. As literary material Enjott Schneider used texts from the poem "Der Mummelsee" by August Schnezler. The “Romantic” central sections of the river between Mainz and Cologne are sometimes considered symbolic of Germany itself and have long inspired poets, painters, and visitors from around the world. In four movements the Symphony No. 6 "The Rhine" thematicizes different moods and atmospheres of this legendary river.

Both the piano work Hamamuth - Stadt der Engel and the piano concerto Wer sind diese Kinder are composer Rolf Riehm's attempts to substantially broaden the spectrum of political music. Hamamuth - Stadt der Engel focuses on the omnipresence of violence experienced during the Iraq War. Both works show that it would be insufficient to look for their political facets exclusively on a semantic level. The physical understanding of music appears to be almost equally important. These powerful works are performed by the SWR Sinfonie Orchester Baden-Baden conducted by Beat Furrer.

WERGO publishes the live recording of the concert given at the occasion of Dieter Schnebel's 70th birthday on 14 March 2000 in the Universitat der Kunste Berlin. The composer himself appreciates this recording very much: "This performance was very carefully rehearsed, very much in the spirit of the piece, and took place in an impressive and poetic staging in the Hochschule’s modern theater. Every time I hear the very fine recording again, I am overcome again and filled with special gratitude." "Orchestra", a symphonic score for mobile musicians, expects an improvisation-like playing that is nonetheless sensitive to sound and imaginatively shaped – but also resistance, withdrawal, assertion, and agreement.

Suggestions of late romanticism, elements from rock and jazz, ethnic music from Indian flutes to West Coast, choirs of angels, countless instruments he plays himself, like sitar, saranghi, harp, keyboards, guitars, various flutes and percussion, along with natural sounds... All this is interwoven and mixed as if it were completely natural. The Mantic music of the spiritual teacher Awankana, who lives near Buenos Aires, is unique. It is dreamlike not in the sense of the clich� but in the sense of C. G. Jung's theory of archetypes.

Carl Orff's worldfamous hit "Carmina Burana" belongs to the most performed orchestral and choral works of contemporary music. "Carmina Burana" was the first work that could bring Orff's intentions and desires, which had until that point existed pluralistically side by side, into a tonality - the search for compact, elementary forms of expression, the joy in the discovery and revitalization of old, longforgotten arts, and finally the tendency toward drama, theater, to the action on stage. This recording is identical with CD 1 of WER 62752 "Trionfi".

Awankana is 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.

Ra� developed in the 1920s in the Oran region, an Algerian port city that has many cultural influences. The emotional voices and rapid rhythms were soon addressing explosive themes such as alcohol and prostitution, depression and poverty. In addition to the traditional gasbah (flute) and bendir (drum) oud, violin, and accordion were used. In 1965 Bellemou Messaoud formed his own ensemble with drums (tabla, darbouka) and trumpet - a combination that had never been heard previously. To the music of his ensemble, which was firmly anchored in rai, he added the timbres of other styles familiar to him.