Kruger's music can manifest itself as compositions with an enormous variety of structures and instrumental combinations, as multisensory mixtures of sound, image, and movement, or as pure electronics, or... - an aesthetic range reflected, at least partially, in the program of this album. But in spite of this heterogeneity that defies conventional categorization, there are certain significant constants in Kruger's works. One of these is the physicality of their linguistic forms and a correspondingly close connection to the interpretive powers of their performers. He investigates and redefines sounds, exploring physiognomies and contexts that were not yet in his repertoire. The early organ piece "conTemp[s]lations" might seem to be out of place, but it's expansive microtonality and unconventional coloration foreshadow Kruger's later electronic works such as "rosebud". Everything in this contemplative sound continuum is geared toward flowing transformations of sound qualities and the relationships of timbral mixtures. The instrumental monologues and dialogues of "fuckin' A!", "renk", and "nun schauervoll einmalig blickt es mich an" are characterized by a high degree of density and kinetic energy. "rosebud", for dancer, motion sensors, and live electronics was created at the renowned IRCAM center in Paris in collaboration with dancer Victor Virnot, whose choreography is closely linked to the live electronic processes. During the development of the piece, each of the two levels was influenced, and even determined, by the other, until "rosebud" finally achieved it's final, definitive form. The dancer embodies, so to speak, an "extended" musician - a hybrid of man and machine.

The composer Hans Werner Henze describes his Ninth Symphony for mixed chorus and orchestra (words by Hans-Ulrich Treichel after the novel "The Seventh Cross" by Anna Seghers) as follows:"What happens in this symphony is an apotheosis of terror and pain. It is a summa samarium of my creative output, the attempt to come to terms with the assaults of an arbitrary and unpredictable world. (...) A German reality, this symphony is above all an expression of enormous respect for the people who dared to resist in the time of Nazi-Fascist terror and who gave their lives to defend freedom of thought."

Michael Blake is South African composition’s most important link to the American and British experimental traditions of the second half of the 20th century. It is a connection that derives as much from the composer’s temperament and aesthetic sensibility, as from more conscious decisions relating to the socio-political positioning of composition. As regards the former, Blake’s affinity with composers like Charles Ives and John Cage precedes his mature engagements with these composers through an embrace of certain qualities of openness relating to musical structure and material that can be heard throughout the works recorded on this album. Blake’s “song without words” demonstrates deconstruction, playfulness, irregularity, irony and a postmodern referential sensibility. Apart from “song without words,” which was written in 1972, the seven other works recorded on this album date from between 2008 and 2016, a period of mature compositional activity bookended by the composer’s retirement to the village of Hout Bay near Cape Town late in 2008, and relocation to France in 2015.

The enigmatic beginning of Lisa Streich's portrait album in the series Edition Zeitgenossische Musik lays the cornerstone for a sound journey, oscillating between this world and the hereafter. In the liner notes, Rainer Nonnenmann describes an inventive musical cosmos, whose unity develops only of alleged contradictions: "Lisa Streich's music has a captivating beauty, at once earnest and playful, strong and meaningful, physical, cruel and tender. It gives us much to feel and think about. It is multi-voiced, ambivalent, incongruous, poetic and profane, as fraught with contradictions as is life itself. It is music of this world, and yet it is not." To create a wide musical spectrum, the Swedish composer uses a variety of instrumentation: raging from duo, over ensemble and choir, to orchestra. The five pieces have been especially recorded for this album by ensemble recherche, hand werk and UT insieme vocale-consonante, among others. Different production conditions also correspond to the musical diversity: While three of the album's compositions were recorded at regular venues, the recordings of the vocal works took place in the Cologne Cathedral and the Roman church of Santa Maria in Campitelli.

Like hardly any other personality in music history, Harry Partch has freed himself from the constraints of musical conventions. He has not only left the beaten paths of the conservatories, but has also developed his own microtonal sound system, which he has captured in spectacularly beautiful, archaically wild yet angularly modern instruments that are indispensable for a live performance. Since 2013, Ensemble Musikfabrik has been the only ensemble in possession of a full set of replica Partch instruments. These are not used solely for the performance of Partch’s own music, however; through numerous commissions in the context of their project "pitch 43_tuning the cosmos", they have inspired composers from all over the world to immerse themselves in these fantastical musical sculptures and their world of microtonal sounds. This album presents three outstanding examples of the many and varied ways in which the Cologne-based ensemble has taken up Partch’s legacy: Sampo Haapamäki’s "Heritage", "Wooden Clouds" by Martin Smolka and" Voices for Harry Partch" by Carola Bauckholt.

String quartets have for a long time been received as a conversation between four rational people. For 20th and 21st century composers wanting to leave this idea of a discussion behind, the question has been: in what other ways can one write for two violins, viola, and violoncello? Helmut Zapf’s three string quartets perfectly illustrate the stages of such a confrontation. They have appeared throughout his entire career as a composer, and can be understood as markers for different periods in his compositional output. In Zapfs first string quartet elements of an individual musical rhetoric survive and are clearly understandable as such. However, the context – the “rational conversation” – is now present in only a rudimentary fashion. The second string quartet is a logical continuation of the path already established by Zapf: the last remnants of rhetoric and conversational discourse are dispensed with. The four instruments do not act individually, but are treated as a single organism. The third string quartet has been written for the Sonar group. This composition takes up the experiences of the previous pieces and at the same time tries to connect with the tradition: a reconnection from a great and skeptical distance.

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).

Classical Music

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)

This new WERGO album brings together first recordings in studio quality of works composed especially for Ensemble Resonanz. Composer Enno Poppe has always been drawn to string instruments because of the nearly infinite possibilities to vary their pitch, playing techniques, and sound qualities. Ensemble Resonanz, based in Hamburg, has received international acclaim for its precise intonation, its fresh interpretations of both contemporary and traditional works, and its inquisitive openness to unconventional musical formats. Poppe’s “Wald” [Woods] for four string quartets (2009/10) has been a permanent feature of the ensemble’s touring repertoire for many years. With its fractal relationships between the four strings of four instruments in four string quartet groupings, “Wald” gives us the impression of directly participating in the composer’s thought processes. The collaboration with renowned soloist Tabea Zimmermann for Poppe’s concerto “Filz” [Felt] for viola and chamber orchestra (2013/14) was particularly enjoyable for all concerned. Zimmermann combines technical virtuosity with a willingness to master unusual challenges: in this work, she plays an endless and permanently shifting intonation curve within an amorphous atmosphere of 1/3-tone intervals. The result sounds like music from another world, and the inspiration came from Poppe’s experiences with traditional Korean music. “Stoff” [Material] was originally composed in 2015 for Ensemble Musikfabrik in Cologne using strings, woodwinds, and brass (available on WER 73952}, but in 2018 Poppe created the more homogeneous version for string orchestra heard here.

Enno Poppe’s works are probably performed more often than those of any other living German composer – not only in Germany. With his idiosyncratic manner of dealing with tradition, this red-haired artist, born in 1969, has developed an instantly recognizable musical style that fascinates and touches both specialists and listeners normally skeptical of new music. No matter how wild or eccentric, how chaotic or structured Poppe’s pieces may sound, they always reveal the raw materials from which they are made: a small number of nondescript building blocks (quasi-motifs). The fascination for the listener consists in the perceptible transformation of these motifs. Poppe has worked closely for many years as a conductor with the Ensemble Musikfabrik in Cologne and has written a number of pieces especially for the group. The current album collects these chamber music works, including “Stoff” for nine musicians. The German word “Stoff” can refer to fabric or any kind of material, including musical or literary material; the appearance and disappearance of motivic threads is also characteristic of the “Nouveau Roman.” The titles and sounds of the other works are also simultaneously direct and ambiguous. This album is part of WERGO’s comprehensive series documenting Enno Poppe’s music.

John Cage approached the music from Japan from its roots in Zen Buddhism and its intent to imitate nature. One important element in this context is the interpretational freedom of the performers, who can adjust the musical text to their own inner state or rhythm. “ASLSP” stands for “As Slow aS Possible.” Other than this, the interpreter is free to choose the tempo, as well as the registration and dynamics. Toshio Hosokawa employs Japanese aesthetic principles using both Western and traditional Japanese instruments and ensembles, in the process bringing the sounds of the two traditions into closer proximity. Dominik Susteck creates bridges to the otherwise very different music of Cage and Hosokawa on behalf of three improvisations in the church “Kunst-Station Sankt Peter” in Cologne/Germany, pieces that are conceived spatially, first of all through the literal movement of the sounds throughout the performing space, but primarily because the progression of sound impulses suggests various sound spaces, sonic landscapes, and a distinct sense of foreground and background.

These piano works by Cowell and Cage cover the period from 1912-1948 and document not only the emergence of experimental American music, but also their teacher-student relationship. Before John Cage began his brief and informal studies with Arnold Schoenberg, he studied composition with Cowell. Amiable Conversation allows us to compare Cowell's piano pieces with Cage's to reveal common features that are as clear as the differences.

All life originated out of primeval mud. And all life dissolves back into it again at the end. This release in the Edition Musikfabrik series leans its ear towards sewage sludge as well as “the ocean of yes and no.” It cringes at the end of the world before the sublimity of nature, seeking to surpass her with composed conglomerates, it allows itself to be buried alive, only to eat itself free from the earth three times. Four fascinating attempts to understand nature and to explore humanity’s position within it. For the composer Brian Ferneyhough, Cornwalls inhospitable landscape of moraine became the starting point of a composition for six voices and an 18 member ensemble. Klaus Langs „The ocean of yes and no“ is a story with no beginning or end, no climax and no apotheosis. While Carola Bauckholt has often used the “fauna philharmonic” in her recent compositions, she works with a whole bestiary in "Schlammflocke". In Jorge E. Lopez’s „Gonzales the Earth Eater“ the composer quotes William S. Burroughs’s psychedelic sceneries with creatures such as „Gonzales“, who defies his own funeral. This recording contains four fascinating attempts to understand Nature and to explore man’s place (in Nature). The demanding artwork of the series is created with pictures by the painter Gerhard Richter, commenting on the thematic concentration of the programs in an artistic manner. Richter, one of the most important living German artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.

Milica Djordjevic’s compositions are musical explorations, meticulous observations and dissections. Seven such investigations of sound are presented by the Serbian composer on her portrait album in the series EDITION ZEITGENÖSSISCHE MUSIK. Primarily, Djordjevic focuses on an extreme and exhaustive exploration of the musical material. In the booklet Barbara Eckle points out Djordjevic’s specific approach: "She develops a material component further and further in an increasingly large, loud and dense wave, distorting it, perverting it, multiplying it, squeezing out of it everything it has to give – until it implodes. The rupture is sudden and abrupt, as if the plug of an electronic appliance were ripped from a wall socket." Also essential for Djordjevic’s work is an interdisciplinary perspective, which is based on a diversified aesthetic socialisation, influencing her music in different ways. Each compositional process finally creates musical figures, which, at the same time, affect psyche and ratio. All pieces have been especially recorded at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne by internationally well-known interpreters such as Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Teodoro Anzellotti.

Classical Music

Siberia is known for its vast distances and the unfathomable dimensions of its unspoiled landscapes of rivers and lakes, forests and mountains, and tundra and taiga. The city of Krasnoyarsk is at the center of Eurasia between Moscow and Beijing and has a surprisingly vibrant musical life. In 2019, the city commissioned two works by Enjott Schneider, one of Germany’s most multifaceted composers. For the “Asia-Siberia-Europe Festival”, Schneider composed “Spirits of Siberia” for trumpet, strings, and percussion. In this work, trumpet virtuoso Reinhold Friedrich embodies the world of shamanistic mysteries. In the piece’s four movements, the soloist conjures the Siberian flora and fauna with mystical sound worlds that take us far beyond the reality of our normal physical senses. “Leporello & Giovanni” was commissioned by the Trans-Siberian Art Festival. The double continent of Eurasia is symbolized in this double concerto by double bass and contrabass balalaika played by two of the world’s finest virtuosos: Artem Chirkov, the principal double bass player of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, and Mikhail Dzyudze, whose innovations have brought the balalaika from folk music into the classical concert halls of the world. The music moves against the background of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, with the soloists energetically personifying the complicated relationship between Don Giovanni and his servant Leporello.

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.

The saxophone is a synonym for rich timbre and a wide range of expressive possibilities, but despite its highly attractive features, the instrument was a late addition to the classical orchestra. Seen in this light, the work by the saxophone quartet clair-obscur which devotes itself intensively to classical works for saxophone takes on a particular significance. The ensemble's repertoire is seemingly inexhaustible. From adventurous arrangements of piano music to string quartet, there is nothing the musicians leave untried. They employ their instruments to bring to life a myriad of different tonal colours and musical genres. Paul Hindemith is the focus of this album: :during the 1920's, he became enchanted by the tone of the saxophone, integrating it on a number of occasions into the scores of his stage works. The ensemble clair-obscur has a special interest in his chamber music, for example the Sonata for four horns and the composition ''Frankenstein's Monstre Repertoire'' for string quartet. These works alongside the other compositions featured on this album have been specially arranged for this saxophone ensemble production by Christoph Enzel.

Rolf Riehm is... an unconventional artist. Before him, nobody has ever sensualized in music such a complex cosmos of philosophical reflections, historical facts, myths, fairytales, memories, scientific arguments, the sublime and the trivial, current sociopolitical findings, very personal ingredients and contributions.' - Bernd Leukert. In a letter to Guy Braunstein, soloist at the world premiere, Riehm describes “Shifting” for violin and orchestra as 'a huge, sweeping melody. For me, it is like a river that continually gains new strength from the downhill slope of its landscape – the landscape here is the expressivity which gives impetus to the "melody" and drives it forward, "…moltissimo appassionato…". The third section is nothing other than a single suspension extended to almost five minutes. And then shortly before the end: no more restrictions, no excessive pressures, only free movement. This is the true beginning of the piece!' Riehm sees his composition “Archipel Remix” for orchestra with electronic playbacks as an 'archipelago, a complex of islands, consisting of differently sized islands. The piece starts at the beginning and ends at the end, unsurprisingly, but I want to avoid [the natural passage of time]. Hence the metaphor of the archipelago and the type of designation.' - Marion Saxer & Rolf Riehm)

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.

When it was first heard in 1962, Mauricio Kagel’s organ piece Improvisation Ajoutée created a scandal. The cause was clearly the sounds the organist and his two assistants were required to produce in addition to the sounds of the instrument – speaking, coughing, laughing, whistling, clapping, and above all loud groans and shouts. There is a further revolutionary innovation in “Improvisation ajoutée”: the two assistants arrange the organ’s registration, and even have a system of their own in the score. As a result, there are very fast shifts in registration and color, which follow their own rhythm and are independent of the organist’s score. The sound world of Kagel’s second work for organ, the Fantasie für Orgel mit Obbligati, is less complex. However, Kagel gave the new work a social, cultural, and theatrical subtext in which the borders between “art” and “life” are crossed more resolutely, thereby establishing an entirely new type of complexity. The organ part is here supplemented by two tape recordings that acoustically depict the organist’s working day, somewhat like an audio film. Dominik Susteck reflects on his experiences with Kagel’s organ works. In the spirit of Kagel, Susteck takes the chance material of the letters of Kagel’s name – K-A-G-E-L – as a challenge to his fantasy, and the titles that capture the basic ideas of the five improvisations have a “kagelesque” quality.

Classical Music

There is no doubt that the present album has ane specially personal meaning for Juliane Banse, because it celebrates her many years of association with all three composers, Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann and Hans Werner Henze. Juliane Banse met these composers at the beginning of ther career and still enjoys a close friendship with them. A close collaboration has led over the years to the premiere of many of their works. It is not surprising that Reimann's "Drei Gedicht der Sappho" and Rihm's "Aria/Ariadne" are dedicated to her and the Munich Chamber Orchestra; Although Juliane Banse did not have regular contact with the composers during the period when these works were written, she says she had complete confidence that the pieces would be composed with her in minda nd appropriate for her voice. The finished works justified this confidence. The third piece on this album was written before Juliane Banse was born, but she does have a connection to Hans-Werner Henze: in the opera "L'Upupa und der Triuph der Sohnesliebe", from 2003, Henze wrote a role especially for her voice, and she was intensely involved in the compositional process.

The American composer Christian Wolff (b. 1934) is the last living representative of the New York School (Rauschenberg, Rothko, etc.). Wolff was not even an adult when he studied with Grete Sultan and John Cage. Wolff’s music was much more politically motivated than that of Feldman and Cage, which is evident on this new WERGO album by Trio Accanto. The album features first recordings made in close collaboration with Wolff in the studios of Deutschlandfunk Cologne/Germany. Wolff's great “Trio IX – Accanto” (2017) is a testament to his long-standing friendship with the musicians. Peculiarly serene and unobtrusively narrative, the piece features many reminiscences and hidden quotations from music by J. S. Bach to union songs. There are also tributes to Wolff's own “Exercises”, whose more recent numbers can be heard on the album as well. These “Exercises” sound lucid and atmospheric, yet complex. Each player has to decide for himself/herself on the course of the musical thoughts and spontaneously put them together in the group as an exercise. Collective agreement for individual positions as a musical and social task. This music by Wolff “still sings a longer modernism”, writes Seth Brodsky. “You can hear the historical horizon in it, not as some grandiose prophecy, but like an outline full of white space. The music is interested in the grace of presentness, of being-here, but it doesn’t lack desire.”