Lethe

After the break up of the band Mirror after only one album (1976's Daybreak) and intensive touring of Holland, three of the core members of that band - Philip de Goey, Kees Walravens and Johan Saanen - formed Lethe in 1978. In addition to de Goey on piano, oboe and flute, Walravens on guitar, and Saanen on bass guitar, Lethe also featured Hans Lambers on drums, percussion, xylophone, vibraphone and strings, and Thuur Feyen on organ, piano and strings…

After the break up of the band Mirror after only one album (1976's Daybreak) and intensive touring of Holland, three of the core members of that band - Philip de Goey, Kees Walravens and Johan Saanen - formed Lethe in 1978. In addition to de Goey on piano, oboe and flute, Walravens on guitar, and Saanen on bass guitar, Lethe also featured Hans Lambers on drums, percussion, xylophone, vibraphone and strings, and Thuur Feyen on organ, piano and strings. Like Mirror, Lethe too was to be short lived. The band recorded only one self-titled album that was released in 1981. The album consists of four lengthy instrumental tracks whose sound has been compared to that of Camel.

Wolfgang Rihm (born in 1952) is one of the most important European composers of the late twentieth to early twenty first centuries, but his work is little known in America. He is famous for his productivity; before his 50th birthday, he had written over 400 pieces. The four concertos recorded here are similar in their manic energy, offering few moments of repose. The expressive directions for Music for oboe and orchestra include the instructions "as if overwound," "wild and funny," and "frantic," and those phrases aptly describe the effect of his work. Rihm is an unabashed modernist, and the surface of his music may be too prickly for some listeners, but it's deeply expressive, and at times very funny, such as at the end of the oboe concerto.