ROBERT HP PLATZ (b.1951): Klavierstücke No. 1 "Trail", No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 "Up" and No. 5 "Unter Segel".

Description: Hailing from the Cologne of Stockhausen and Kagel, a contemporary of Clarence Barlow, Platz is an innovative structuralist; novelty of form is of great importance in his music, leading to an overlapping polyphony of considerable complexity. Trail explores the forms that evolve as completely different lines of music, from violent, wild flurries of notes to subtle pointillism to percussive effects on the body of the piano are presented simultaneously (requiring its own kind of virtuosity). Piano Piece 2 incorporates a tape part, adding bell- and organ-like sonorities to increasingly chordal piano textures; Piano Piece 3 divides the keyboard according to register, the middle calm and reflective in the face of hectic activity in the outer registers. Up is one of four works which can be played separately or simultaneously; the title is the name of a subatomic particle, a quark, but also refers to the piece's ascent - in complexity, pitch and dynamics as it progresses. The brief sections of the recent Piano Piece 5 can also be interlocked with other works; the encapsulate elements of Platz' evolving style, less concerned with virtuosity and complexity and more economically structured and open-textured than the earlier works. Rolf Hind (piano). SACD hybrid.