RALF YUSUF GAWLICK (b.1969): Imagined Memories (Bîranînên Xeyalî), op. 20, FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828): String Quartet No.13, D.804 “Rosamunde”.

Description: Gawlick’s extended, intense work has an unusual structure, and an unique autobiographical subtext. The composer reflects on his origins - an orphan, born in Germany to a Kurdish mother he has never met - and explores the concept of autobiographical memory through this lens. The details of his imaginary relationship with his biological mother and the musical symbolism in the piece - note cryptograms and structural relationships - are detailed in a lengthy essay in the booklet that is a separate work of art in its own right. The piece is built out of distorted quotations from composers as diverse as Schubert, Shostakovich and Kurtag, along with stylistic allusions to traditional musics of the region of the composer's origins. The music thus fades continuously between tonal, classical-romantic models, varying degrees of modernism and accreted memory phantoms circling the original material; memories recalled inaccurately, or constructed to fulfill desire; the whole retains a tonal foundation. An expository movement is followed by 17 short 'memory footprints' and a reflective coda. 2 CDs. Hugo Wolf Quartett.