• Tracks

Neos presents the fifth release in a series of illustrious recordings dedicated to the music of Peter Ruzicka. As a composer, conductor, and artistic director, Ruzicka (born 1948) ranks among the most influential personalities of international cultural life. At the same time, his art constitutes an autonomous musical cosmos in itself, marked by impressive métier, auratic sound poetics, and a profound consciousness of tradition. In this third volume of his orchestral music, Ruzicka pays tribute to some of the leading cultural figures of history: Richard Wagner, Paul Celan, and Hans Werner Henze. A Wagner memorial composition by Franz Liszt provides the basis for Ruzicka's orchestral palimpsest as well as for a kind of compositional retracing for piano; Recherche (-I'M Innersten) is a chorus scene from the heart of his confessional Celan opera; Spiral, for Hans Werner Henze, is a work for a quartet of French horns and orchestra, and a piece of anger and sorrow, according to Siemens Prize winner Peter Gülke's liner notes. Leipziger Hornquartett; Sophie-Mayuko Vetter, piano; MDR Rundfunkchor; MDR Sinfonieorchester; Peter Ruzicka, conductor.