ROBERT HEPPNER (b.1925): Im Gestein for Choir, Percussion and String Quartet, GYÖRGY LIGETI (1923-2006): Lux Aeterna for 16-part Mixed Choir, 3 Phantasien nach Friedrich Hölderlin, 3 excerpts from Sonata for Solo Viola.

Description: Ligeti's austere viola pieces contrast strongly with the complex sound-masses of his famous Lux æterna, which are also related to the complex, overlapping textures of the much later (and less avant-garde sounding, but no less eerie, evocative and magnificent) Hölderlin settings. His close contemporary Heppener slipped into obscurity during the avant garde dominated 1960s, but his career had an unusual late flowering with works like the present settings of Paul Celan, from 1992. The music is ethereal, spare, frequently on the edge of stillness and silence, yet emotionally potent. Episodes of quasi-liturgical polyphony relieve the hushed, inward-looking presentation of the texts, heightening the work's sense of color and drama. German/French-English texts. Cappella Amsterdam, musikFabrik; Daniel Reuss, Susanne van Els (viola).