DAAN MANNEKE (b.1939): ARCIII/La Flèche for String Quartet, 4 Chorale Preludes, Orgelbüchlein - JS Bach for String Quartet (Van Dingstee Quartet), Cantique de Pascal for Chorus (Studium Chorale;  Hans Leenders), La Mélodie Passagère for Solo Violin (Marijn Simons), Cantique de Siméon for 2 Sopranos, Alto, Tenor and 2 Basses (Mariët Kaasschieter, Henriette Feith [sopranos], Karin van der Poel [alto], Harry van Berne [tenor], Kees Jan de Koning, Bas Ramselaar [basses].

Description: Manneke has concocted an extremely unusual and personal idiom out of components not much employed by contemporary composers, lending his music a powerful sense of originality while remaining oddly familiar and accessible. Renaissance and Baroque forms and harmonies (the former somewhat alien-sounding by comparison with customary classical and romantic tonal usage) are refracted through the idioms of Messaien (with whom Manneke studied) and contemporary composers even farther removed from tradition. The very striking Cantique de Pascal emulates a 17th-century motet, setting Pascal's 'Pensées', with the accompaniment of harmonium; but respectful of its early antecedents as the music is, this could only be a contemporary work, with episodes that are closer to Stockhausen's Stimmung than early music. Similarly, pungent dissonances and sudden percussions disturb the tonality of the string quartet and La Mélodie, which nonetheless preserve a thoroughly approachable sense of tonality, with allusions to plainchant and renaissance polyphony. The four brief Bach transcriptions find the composer in his element, with ingenious evocation of organ textures in muted strings in close harmony in 'Ich ruf' zu dir ...' and more conventional quartet textures in the others. Attractive works that are also slightly challengingly disorienting from an historical perspective, with their timeless sense of the simultaneity of ancient and modern.