The End of Flowers
Gryphon Trio
Analekta AN 2 9520 (analekta.com)

There’s no explanation in the booklet about the CD’s title, The End of Flowers. An online search led to Gryphon cellist Roman Borys’ comments: “The First World War brought with it unprecedented loss of life, youth and hope. It was the end of flowers… fields lay barren, blasted and churned beyond recognition.” Borys continues: “In the winds of war Ravel and Clarke composed two remarkable piano trios… not intended as memorials but [which] stand as a testament to the enduring power of life and art.”

Rebecca Clarke left no programmatic description of her 1921 Piano Trio, two years after her other major work, the richly melodic Viola Sonata. Unlike the sonata, her trio evinces the influence of the war. Turmoil erupts immediately with the explosive opening of the Moderato ma appassionato, a movement marked by turbulent melodies, restless rhythms and a distinct bugle-call motif. The mournful Andante molto semplice is followed by the final Allegro vigoroso, alternating between a life-affirming folky tune and quiet reflection. There’s a reprise of the first movement’s agitation and the bugle call, but the trio ends on a positive, buoyant note. This gripping, emotion-filled work deserves to be much better known. Hear it!

Ravel’s familiar Piano Trio lacks obvious war-references, but it garners an especially gravitas-laden interpretation from the Gryphon Trio – University of Toronto artists-in-residence currently celebrating their 25th anniversary. Both of these marvellous works receive exemplary performances in a disc to hear and re-hear.

Music4Eyes+Ears
Megumi Masaki
Centrediscs CMCCD 24017 (musiccentre.ca)

The title of this (Blu-ray+CD) package is an obvious giveaway. If you’re about to dive into its contents, then do so Blu-ray first. The reason is simple: the cover not only reads Music4Eyes+Ears, the visceral excitement of the music is also magnified exponentially by viewing Megumi Masaki perform her music on the Blu-ray. Although Keith Hamel’s Touch is the only work performed on both, its enormous impact when viewed on Blu-ray is absolute proof of the visual experience. Remember also that music was a visual experience long before the invention of recording technology. Those eager listeners who decide to jump in CD-first anyway are hardly likely to be disappointed, though.

Music4Eyes+Ears is made up of repertoire that is simply breathtaking. That has principally to do with Masaki’s pianism. Her depth of understanding of narrative is unprecedented and her ability to translate musical composition into something emotionally vivid and alive is quite extraordinary. Orpheus Drones by T. Patrick Carrabré is an evanescent work in which the legendary Greek protagonist, musician, poet and prophet is served by the closest approximation of what might be described as divine music. The follow-up, Orpheus (2), is superbly related to death and descent – the politically motivated murder of Chilean singer Victor Jara becoming its principle contemporary metaphor via Margaret Atwood’s poem.

The performance of Touch is where the worlds of eyes and ears meet. But while the music itself is statuesque and graceful, it is in the balletic performance by Masaki on the Blu-ray that it comes magically alive. The floating melody and harmony, egged on by a plethora of ethereally sounding bells (played electronically) is heightened also by the sweeping hand movements, often in the air above the keyboard, which become visual metaphors as they tell a tactile story of dancers coming together and drawing apart.

In Ferrovia, Masaki aligns her visionary performance with the ethereal conceptions of composer Brent Lee and multimedia artist Sigi Torinus. The near-impossible realities of physical and mathematical sciences collide with a human presence, around which dynamic images provoke grief-suggesting sounds. Meanwhile the powerful music of Hamel’s Corona echoes with its own intercessory, who appears in the form of a spectral Gérard Grisey. And the often-terrifying Stanley Kubrick film The Shining comes alive in Kubrick Études by Nicole Lizée, which incorporates (often glitched) clips from his films. However, throughout the discs, despair and ugliness are compellingly resolved by the beauty and hope of Masaki’s musicianship.

Kumbos
Paulo J Ferreira Lopes; Karoline Leblanc
Atrito-Afeito (atrito-afeito.com)

Even if you really, really dislike electroacoustic music, give this release a try because its strength in sound, collaboration and experimentation lead to accessible listening. Montreal-based composer/performer Paulo J Ferreira Lopes utilizes his many, many clever and established electro and percussion skills to create a fascinating musical conversation with his collaborator, acoustic keyboards performer Karoline Leblanc, in this one-track, hand-numbered 200 limited edition sound adventures release.

Kumbos begins with an attention-grabbing recurring percussive opening and dense piano chords. The subsequent soundscape of high pitched squeaks and cymbal washes against piano textures is a pleasing juxtaposition of sound effects. More melodic piano lines provide contrast in the quieter sections. Love the sudden loud electronic crashes. Highly effective are the numerous silences interspersed throughout the work, which are welcome escapes from sound, and music in their own right. These add to the creation of musical intrigue leading to the final climactic conversation of more intense electroacoustic rhythms, large held piano chords and washes of sound colour.

There are touches of field recordings by Leblanc which are a bit of a strain to hear but are colourful musical diversions. Additional melodic piano sections would be welcome, as well as more drum kit against electronic effects. The production is clear and the instrument levels are balanced. Repeated listening adds to a gratifying appreciation of detail in performance and composition.

Shadow Etchings – New Music for Flute
Orlando Cela
Ravello Records RR7982 (ravellorecords.com)

Orlando Cela’s Shadow Etchings is a nine-track collection of recent compositions for flute using “extended techniques,” whistle tones, harmonics, vocalizing and playing at the same time, blowing air quickly through the flute without making an actual pitch and so on. Having some experience with extended techniques I can say with some conviction that Cela does them very well.

A brief description of each track will provide an idea of what is on this recording: Jean-Patrick Besingrand’s Le soupir du roseau dans le bras du vent, the first track, is derived from Claude Debussy’s Syrinx. Beginning with the first couple of phrases of Syrinx, variations are added using vocalizations, breath tones, throat flutters and other distortions of which the flute is capable. Lou Bunk’s Winter Variations consists of distorted long tones on the flute with percussive discords on the piano. Robert Gross’ Variations on a Schenker Graph of Gesualdo, combines manipulated electronics with harsh multiphonics and vocal punctuations by the flutist. Dana Kaufman’s Hang Down Your Head is a disjointed version of the original Tom Dooley folk melody complete with vocal growls, whistles and shrieks. The three movements of Stratis Minakakis’ Skiagrafies II offer lots of multiphonics, overtones, shimmers, vibes and twitters. A Turning Inwards by Edward Maxwell Dulaney gives us high alternating overtone whistles and Self-Portrait by Ziteng Ye is built on wavering, breathy tones with some voice added.

All in all, this disc offers an intriguing introduction to some of the new sounds available to the contemporary flutist.

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Aesthetic Apparatus – Clarinet Chamber Music of Helmut Lachenmann
Gregory Oakes; Matthew Coley; Jonathan Sturm; Mei-suang Huang; George Work
New Focus Recordings FCR196 (gregoryoakes.com)

Utter the name Helmut Lachenmann in a loud stage whisper, being sure to accentuate fully the consonants, exaggerating the different vowel colours, and you’ll have an idea what it is like to perform his music. He asks performers to make varying sounds which require a complete rethinking of one’s technical approach. Lachenmann, Maurizio Kagel and Heinz Holliger have led the way to innovative notations depicting the strange breath effects, kisses, clicks, squeaks and honks they demand from performers.

In Aesthetic Apparatus, clarinetist Gregory Oakes has compiled three substantial chamber works by Lachenmann. The first, Dal Niente, for solo clarinet, is an extension of silence into a variety of soundscapes. Oakes conveys conviction that all the sounds he generates belong in a congruent whole, and with more hearings I’m certain I’d agree. What is unusual in this recording is the extended periods of nearly empty time, where the effects produced might be more easily perceived if one could see them produced. It takes chutzpah to publish this performance on a sound-only recording.

Trio Fluido, for clarinet, viola and percussion, provides a richer soundscape, although the writing is still full of attenuated pauses. Early exchanges between the instruments seem full of repressed violence, which occasionally breaks out into outright hostility. Beyond this, there are delightful moments of simply elegant trialogue, as if three species of creature are employing their various intelligences to match one another’s language.

Allegro Sostenuto, for clarinet, cello and piano, completes this wonderful exploration. I use the term “tonal” modified by “somewhat more” to indicate that in contrast to the first two tracks, this work exploits more interplay between pitches than raw sounds, making it perhaps the most immediately listenable.

East of the Sun & West of the Moon – Orchestral Music of Daniel Crozier
Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz; Moravian PO; Stanislav Vavřínek
Navona Records NV6137 (danielcrozier.com)

“These are fairy tale pieces,” writes American composer Daniel Crozier (b.1965), professor of theory and composition at Florida’s Rollins College. Crozier names only one of the stories, saying it’s more entertaining for listeners to use their own imaginations.

The 34-minute Symphony No.1: Triptych for Orchestra begins with Ceremonies, a movement whose sombre sonorities and unstable tonal centres suggest portentous, menacing situations. The second movement, Capriccio, with its sprightly winds, dancing strings and outbursts of brass and percussion, conjures (for me) images of malicious elves cavorting in a dark forest. The final movement, Fairy Tale: East of the Sun and West of the Moon, draws its title from a Norwegian folk tale containing many familiar fairy tale elements. This, the symphony’s slow movement, features a long-lined, otherworldly melody for the violins followed by a solo flute floating over hushed strings. I was quite taken with this music – rather than hearing episodes of a story, I “saw” a beautiful, secluded mountain lake, shimmering under the stars. The symphony ends by recalling its ominous opening before quietly fading away. No happily-ever-after here. The Seattle Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gerard Schwarz provide an energetic, virtuosic performance.

The 11-minute Ballade: A Tale after the Brothers Grimm resembles the symphony’s second movement – animated playfulness bracketing a sinister-sounding, slow middle section. It’s performed by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra under Stanislav Vavřínek.

Both of these very colourful works are well worth a listen.

Alchemize – Music for Wind Band
U of Southern Mississippi Wind Ensemble; Catherine A. Rand
Naxos 8.573587 (naxos.com)

This album from the Naxos Wind Band Series features performances from the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) Wind Ensemble of two substantial works from a pair of eminent American composers, both born in 1943. Joseph Schwantner’s Luminosity is subtitled “Concerto for Wind Orchestra.” The opening movement, marked spiritoso e energico, pretty well sums up the essence of this composer’s upbeat style. The work brings the percussion section up front (literally) from the get-go, though the introspective middle movement is in effect a clarinet concerto featuring USM clarinet professor Jackie McIlwain. The finale turns the spotlight back on the drum line to mercilessly aggressive effect – are you ready for some football? Not I!

By contrast, the seven movements of David Maslanka’s Hosannas strike an elegiac tone. Writing in an unabashedly tonal language, Maslanka composed over 50 works for wind ensembles before his unexpected demise last year; the album is dedicated to his memory. Chorale tunes and similar simple melodies abound in this kaleidoscopic work. The disc concludes with a tantalizing fragment of a work by Steven Bryant (born 1972), the first movement of his Alchemy in Silent Spaces, which unfolds from an extended introduction for piano and pitched percussion instruments to eventually reveal the full ensemble. It’s a pity we don’t get to hear the full potential of it; at a miserly 54 minutes the disc certainly has room to spare. Marching bands and their more refined cousins, wind ensembles, number in the thousands in the USA. Judging from the evidence of this disc the USM ensemble belongs among the elite of the order.

Marcus Blunt – Orchestral Works
Murray McLachlan; Lesley Wilson; Manchester Camerata; Stephen Threlfall
metier msv 28570 (divineartrecords.com)

This CD presents four works by British composer Marcus Blunt (b.1947), the longest of which is the 27-minute Piano Concerto, ably performed by English pianist Murray McLachlan. Blunt describes the second movement Largo as “tense, mysterious, subdued,” words I’d apply as well to the first and third movements, up until the concerto’s surprisingly upbeat, triumphal final two minutes. Another word I’d use for this work is “ambiguous” – both in tonality and emotion – creating not-unpleasant sensations of disquiet and suspended disequilibrium.

At just under seven minutes, Aspects of Saturn for string orchestra continues the ambiguity, as Blunt observes that in astrology, the planet Saturn somehow represents the contradictory qualities of “self-discipline” and “ambition,” “limitation” and “aspiration.” The music is similarly both disciplined and assertive. The 11-minute, five-movement Concertino for Bassoon and String Orchestra, reshaping material from two of Blunt’s earlier works, was written for and performed here by Lesley Wilson. Here again, constant major-minor shifts and indefinite tonality create emotional ambivalence in what would otherwise have been an innocently playful work. Blunt’s Symphony No.2 lasts nearly 17 minutes, comprising an elegiac Andante, the most emotionally overt music on the disc, plus three gently melodious Allegretto movements.

The pervading elusiveness of Blunt’s music makes for an unusually intriguing listening experience. The Manchester Camerata under Stephen Threlfall provides solid support throughout. 

The Sound of Silent Voices – Children’s Poetry from the Holocaust Reflected in Musical Compositions by Young Composers
Ton Beau String Quartet; Gershon Willinger; Zachary Ebin
Independent (silentvoicesproject.zacharyebin.com)

A few years ago, violinist, music educator and founder/artistic director of the Silent Voices Project, Zachary Ebin, was doing some research at York University and happened upon I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a collection of Jewish children’s drawings and poems, created from 1942 to 1944, during their imprisonment in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

With the knowledge that only about 100 of the 15,000 children sent to Theresienstadt survived, combined with being deeply affected by the children’s heart-wrenching poetry, Ebin was inspired to find a way to keep their voices alive. His idea of having contemporary, young composers create musical works based on that poetry was the genesis of the Silent Voices Project and this ensuing CD.

Fourteen composers, from Toronto, Waterloo, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago, aged 10 to 20 (not unlike the young poets in Theresienstadt) participated. With their astonishing and profoundly moving works, each of them has demonstrated remarkable skill, dignity and maturity beyond their years. Performing their stirring trios and quartets on The Sound of Silent Voices is Toronto’s outstanding Ton Beau String Quartet. Gershon Willinger, who at age two was among the youngest children liberated from Theresienstadt, provides another layer of gravitas, reciting each poem prior to its musical reading.

This is an exceptional project, a heartfelt labour of love and respect. These evocative young voices – both the poets and the composers – deserve our attention. Set aside some quiet time to listen to The Sound of Silent Voices.

To Dream of Silence
Jeff Reilly
Sanctuary Concerts SCCD005 (jeffreilly.ca)

To Dream of Silence, featuring Jeff Reilly both as composer and bass clarinetist, and including one new work by Christos Hatzis, defies easy categorization. The music was inspired by a series of dreams, described in brief prose poems that are narrated as part of the tracks. There is no obvious rhythmic/melodic reference between the words and Reilly’s music, which is often gauzy background harmony supporting rhythmic melodic fragments played by Reilly and punctuated by bells and other percussion. The notes mention accompanying “sound sculptures,” the work of blacksmith John Little. It isn’t clear where Reilly’s music leaves off and the sound sculptures pick up, but perhaps it doesn’t matter.

The work on this disc is highly listenable, and the narrative of the dreams is cryptic enough to grab my interest. I’m unsure whether I’d prefer to simply read the narration, though I am sincerely put off by the announcements of the dream titles, which distract from rather than enhance the music. Your Dark Beauty is rife with Freudian overtones. Eighty Steps, Endless Chambers, and Food for a Soul are dreams that seem to conjure a child’s memories of his home, from a variety of perspectives. Taken together, the series verges on nightmare, with a particular fixation with death. That’s not to say there is only terror; there is some serenity, but unease overrides. What does one imagine Fishing to mean, when what one hooks is an angel?

Reilly, as performer of his own works, creates curious and beautiful effects within a mist of studio-produced sounds. In Hatzis’ Extreme Unction the production is cleaner and the narrative element is entirely musical. This remarkably beautiful elegy for the composer Gustav Ciamaga fits in well with the sombre tone of the disc.

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In the Weeds
Ventus Machina
MSR Classics MS 1633 (ventusmachina.com)

New Brunswick-based woodwind quintet Ventus Machina shows off their classical roots mixed with fun and flavour in their first full-length release. They self-describe their performances as themed programs, evident here in the varied music performed by members Karin Aurell (flute, piccolo), Christie Goodwin (oboe, English horn), James Kalyn (clarinet), Ulises Aragon (French horn) and Patrick Bolduc (bassoon).

Two quintet commissions by Canadian composers are featured. Mike Titlebaum’s Short Set is his three-movement take on a jazz band’s closing tunes. The jazz-flavoured Amblin’ has jazz effects juxtaposed with classical touches and counterpoint against an “amblin’ groove.” A-Fashin’ features more traditional lush harmonies and held tunes while the final movement In the Weeds has upbeat swing grooves, with tricky speedy runs, accented group rhythmic notes and melodic conversations. Martin Kutnowski successfully incorporates his Argentinian musical roots in Tonadas Y Mateadas. After a fast jumpy opening, three main sections follow – a slow oboe theme, a horn-led waltz theme and a fast clarinet dance which resurfaces throughout the work.

Paquito D’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales is an enjoyable mood-shifting listen, while Richard Price arranges Leonard Bernstein’s famous sing-along show tunes for wind quintet subtleties in Suite from West Side Story. Ventus Machina adapts William Scribner’s arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s Milonga Sin Palabras for English horn lead, resulting in an amazing group emulation of the bandoneon sound.

A tight ensemble with impeccable tone, pitch and breath, Ventus Machina really can play anything well.

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Modulations
TorQ Percussion Quartet
BeDoINT Records BR004 (torqpercussion.ca)

I first heard TorQ when I took my grandkids to TorQ’s concerts for kids at Toronto’s Harbourfront. Then, in 2015, I sang in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Toronto Choral Society, TorQ providing the percussion. These guys clearly have fun performing, and it’s fun watching and listening to them.

So it is with this CD, starting with Thrown from a Loop by TorQ member Daniel Morphy. It’s just under nine minutes of music for marimbas and vibraphones, with overlapping loops “influenced,” writes Morphy, “by the music of Steve Reich.” The music has an easy swing to it, unhurried but always moving forward.

Christos Hatzis writes that his 19-minute Modulations for two vibraphones and two marimbas combines the seemingly contradictory styles of minimalism and Elliott Carter’s “metric modulation,” because “each exemplifies and needs the other for musical clarity and informational interest to ensue.” Nonetheless, instead of minimalism or Carter, Modulation’s tonal, tuneful and very jazz-inflected music distinctly reminded me of Milt Jackson’s between-the-beats magic as vibraphonist of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The three movements of Peter Hatch’s 22-minute timespace play with various aspects of musical time and space. Time Zones presents eight different tempi simultaneously, the spatially conceived music of Spooky Action circles the audience in opposite directions, while Gravitas, writes Hatch, “is a light and humorous depiction of musical gravity” that “bends and twists our sensation of time.”

Together, nearly 50 minutes of fun listening from this very fun ensemble.

Illumination
Nancy Ambrose King; Ann Arbor Camerata; Oriol Sans; Victor Minke Huls
Equilibrium Recordings EQ144 (nancyambroseking.com)

Illumination is an intriguing collection of contemporary repertoire for oboe and chamber orchestra. As played by American virtuoso Nancy Ambrose King with the Ann Arbor Camerata, Michael Daugherty’s Firecracker (1991) is brillant in its economy of means, extending semitone “sparks“ into exciting events over its 13 minutes. The title refers to a matchbook popular in 1940s and 1950s Las Vegas, a locale evoked by eerie Spanish-style piano and percussion with wailing oboe glissandi. But there is frenzy in Vegas as well: use of extreme registers, rapid runs and extensive double-tonguing, all handled confidently by King. Following a sensitively-played lyrical section the bass percussion explodes, leading to a dramatic ending.

Alyssa Morris’ Dreamscape (2012) takes the form of a four-movement overnight sequence suggesting childhood drama. King’s tone is evocative in the Falling Asleep and Chase opener; eyes seem to close as a harp enters. But the chase feels underdeveloped musically, as do succeeding movements. The final Nightmare and Awakening is best, building a well-orchestrated sense of menace leading to a brilliant oboe cadenza before emerging into morning.

Both Gone (2016) and Grunge Concerto (2014) were written for Ambrose King by much-commissioned Scott McAllister. The former work is meditative and pastoral, evoking memories of loss. The soloist shows amazing breath control in long tones over a ground bass. The latter work imaginatively recasts a pop genre in three movements ending with Headbanging, a tour-de-force of virtuosity by soloist and orchestra.

Robin de Raaff – Entangled Tales
Various Orchestras
Challenge Records Int. CC72747 (challengerrecords.com)

Robin de Raaff - Stolen back from Time
Various Orchestras and Ensembles
Attacca ATT 2017152 (attaccaproductions.com)

This past December, Dutch composer du jour Robin de Raaff (b.1968) was present for Toronto’s New Music Concerts’ performance of his Percussion Concerto. The following week, the Glenn Gould School New Music Ensemble performed his Ennea’s Domein. (I attended both concerts.) Both works are included in the 2CD set Stolen back from Time, along with his Violin Concerto No.1 “Angelic Echoes,” Double Concerto for clarinet, bass clarinet and orchestra, Unisono for large orchestra, Clarinet Concerto and In Memoriam Dmitri Shostakovich.

There’s a lot to listen to in de Raaff’s complex music, filled with intense energy, bright and unusual sonorities including lots of percussion, and irregular rhythms derived using mathematical constructivist techniques. But it all sounds rather more expressionistic than mathematical, especially in Unisono, 18 minutes of snarling sonic blasts performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Ed Spanjaard. Think of the battle segment of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben but fought with 21st-century weapons.

For me, the other standouts in this album are the feverish Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto. Violinist Joe Puglia evokes references to Berg’s Violin Concerto amid orchestral hints of Mahler. The Double Concerto, with soloists Harmen de Boer and Harry Sparnaay, offers touches of humour, impressionistic colours and sustained passages of quasi-tonal lyricism.

There’s more to admire on The Entangled Tales CD, containing de Raaff’s Cello Concerto, Entangled Tales and Symphony No.3 “Illumination…Eclipse.” The Cello Concerto reveals a very different side of de Raaff, as brooding, songful emotionality replaces brash busy-ness. Here, the dynamics are subdued, the orchestral textures leaner but darker. In five connected movements lasting half an hour, the inward-looking, penumbral concerto receives a haunting performance by Marien van Stallen, the cellist for whom it was written, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Entangled Tales, an eight-minute synopsis of de Raaff’s penchant for assertive declamations and vivid sonorities (similar to Unisono) was commissioned by the Boston Symphony, premiered at Tanglewood and subsequently incorporated into his Symphony No.1 “Tanglewood Tales.” It’s performed with suitable high energy by Neeme Järvi and The Hague’s Residentie Orkest.

De Raaff’s 30-minute, three-movement Symphony No.3 is performed by Het Gelders Orkest under Antonello Manacorda. As its subtitle suggests, it deals with contrasts of light and dark, beginning with two piccolos and tinkly percussion creating eerie, electronics-like sounds, followed by a sudden descent into the orchestra’s dark timbres of brass and percussion. The struggle continues throughout, with quiet, plaintive solos and duos alternating with powerful tutti outbursts. The symphony ends with gentle chords played in mid-range instrumental registers, suggesting a final resolution of synthesis and reconciliation.

I recommend the Entangled Tales CD for anyone wanting an introduction to this significant 21st -century compositional voice.

Zoltán Jeney – Wohin?
Various Artists
BMC BMC CD 240 (bmcrecords.hu)

Wohin? gives international listeners a valuable insight into the postmodernist Hungarian concert music composer Zoltán Jeney (b.1943), featuring recent works for solo piano, voice, cello and piano, string quartet and orchestra. Jeney has been a major voice in Hungarian concert music circles since the 1960s. In 1970, in collaboration with five other leading Hungarian composers, he cofounded the influential group Budapest New Music Studio, which introduced the aesthetics and music of John Cage and Minimalism at its public concerts.

The most provocative work on this album is the title track, Wohin? (German for “Where?”) A five-minute orchestral score featuring a truncated chorus in its last 30 seconds, it’s his response to the Allied invasion of Iraq. Jeney offers a withering parody in his postmodern mashup of recognizable bits of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. As the anthem of the European Union proclaiming that “All people will be brothers,” Jeney couldn’t have chosen a better subject with which to convey his deeply ironic view of the war.

Pavane (2007) for orchestra, the last and most substantial work here, employs a 128-note melody derived from a fractal series. Its first section recalls Ligeti’s Atmosphères with amorphous, shifting orchestral textures and tight heterophony. The second section, characterized by jagged polyphonic lines is brief, succeeded by a much longer final movement featuring a continuous, harmonized melody. The music builds into a kind of halting secular chorale – punctuated by irregular percussive accents – fading out on a quiet yet ultimately unsettled unison.