Although the Symphony and the Requiem appear to be fundamentally different in concept and in the resulting treatment of the musical material, they do have an important point in common. This is the focus of the composer's aesthetic creed which recalls Byzantian thinking: a musical statement always contains it's opposite. It is a whole which includes and unites singularity and multiplicity. It is "this-as-well-as-that", yet at the same time "ne-utral" (in the original sense of "neither-this nor-that"). In the end it neutralizes it's musical precondition, it's relation to tradition, distancing itself from tradition, and becoming in it's way an original phenomenon. Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Peter G�lke: conductor / Maria Bayo: soprano / Iris Vermillion: mezzo soprano / Victor von Halem: bass / Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg / Staatlich Akademischer Chor Riga / Imants Cepitis: chorus master / Gerd Albrecht: conductor.