SALVATORE SCIARRINO (b.1947): Lo spazio inverso, CLAUDIO AMBROSINI (b.1948): De vulgari eloquentia, ALDO CLEMENTI (b.1925): Scherzo, SYLVANO BUSSOTTI (b.1931): Concerto a L'Aquila, FRANCESCO PENNISI (1934-2000): Se appare il dubbio, MICHELE DALL'ONGARO (b.1957): Zero, LORENZO FERRERO (b.1951): Three Simple Songs.

Description: Sciarrino's Lo spazio inverso is a static soundfield of subtle tones, periodically interrupted by sparks and shafts of light. Ambrosini, one of the original founders of this ensemble, prominently features the piano in a quasi-concertante work of shimmering activity. The Clementi (amusingly, and presumably accidentally, weighing in at 4'33" in this recording) is a complex and dissonant canon based on Bach, against a pre-recorded electronic drone. Bussotti's exuberant, playful Concerto incorporates birdsong, references to earlier music, and a sense of improvisation in a rich and complex polyphonic tapestry. The Pennisi is a ghostly, atmospheric piece, relatively conventional in instrumental method, based on an early text by Ezra Pound, a post-script to the Tristan myth, suggestive of the haunted mists of Cornwall. Dall'Ongaro, the youngest composer here, presents 'a short acoustic documentary on the components of the group'; an active and lively scherzo-like piece, and incidentally the only work here that lingers to any significant extent on tonal referents, apart from Ferrero's Simple Songs, which are ingeniously presented, but nonetheless entirely tonal melodies in which elements of minimalism and popular song are incorporated without irony, in an attractive encore of unexpected emotional depth. Ex Novo Ensemble.