VYTAUTAS BALTAKAS (b.1972): (Co)ro(na) for Ensemble (Etienne Siebens [conductor]), REBECCA SAUNDERS (b.1967): Cinnabar for Violin, Trumpet, Music Box and Ensemble (Juditha Haeberlin [violin], Marco Blaauw [trumpet], Peter Rundel [conductor]), MAGNUS LINDBERG (b.1958): Joy for Large Ensemble (Stefan Asbury [conductor]), IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001): Thallein for 14 Musicians (Diego Masson [conductor]).

Description: Baltakas' piece is a kind of analogy of chaotic processes, in which an event occurring to an object may influence future events happening to apparently unconnected objects. The ensemble is divided into two groups, one surrounding the other; the active, frantic material of the outer group produces effects in the inner one, culminating in an unconducted, improvisatory passage. Saunders' Cinnabar explores sonic metaphors for the intensely glowing colors of the pigment of that name, an intense mineral red. The music is intensely colored, appropriately enough, with vivid percussive and distorted tones from the ensemble, with the solo instruments standing out like strokes of pure pigment against an adulterated background of earth tones. Lindberg's Joy is now 20 years old; it incorporates electronically transformed sampled sounds and tonally-based ensemble material in a characteristically complex texture which moves from chaos toward ecstasy and then disintegrates again. The Xenakis consists of typical dense textures, harsh gliding tones and clusters; uncanny, too deliberate to be accidental, echoes of Le sacre are firmly in evidence. MusikFabrik.