Baldur

Dieter Ammann has won numerous international awards and is now one of the most renowned Swiss composers of his generation. The multilayered unbalanced instability is a concerto for violin and chamber orchestra that seeks unpredictability and shifting perspectives between solo and orchestra. Ammann’s slowly developed orchestral triptych reflects his meticulous working methods. Core reshapes and transcends its improvised origins, while the slowly unfolding Turn serves as an Adagio in the set. The irrepressible energy of Boost forms the kind of dramaturgy of tension and release that led Boulez to describe Ammann’s music as ‘artistic reflected spontaneity at the highest level’.

The unifying idea of the concerto provides a way to get a handle on György Ligeti's experimental spirit, for a concerto here represents several fundamentally different things. The Cello Concerto of 1966, right at the height of Ligeti's exuberantly fearless adventures in 1960s Germany, might almost be called an anti-concerto, with the cello doing its best to hang on the edge of silence. Sample the very first movement, both for the precision of cellist Christian Poltéra's work at the low end of the dynamic spectrum and for the ideally clean engineering work by the BIS label, operating in a variety of Norwegian venues and mastering them, well, masterfully. The Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments and the Melodien are essentially concertos for orchestra, with distinctive roles for each of the instruments, while the five-movement Piano Concerto, completed in 1988, is a fine and technically demanding example of Ligeti's later pulse-based, polyrhythmic style.

Dieter Ammann has won numerous international awards and is now one of the most renowned Swiss composers of his generation. The multilayered unbalanced instability is a concerto for violin and chamber orchestra that seeks unpredictability and shifting perspectives between solo and orchestra. Ammann’s slowly developed orchestral triptych reflects his meticulous working methods. Core reshapes and transcends its improvised origins, while the slowly unfolding Turn serves as an adagio in the set. The irrepressible energy of Boost forms the kind of dramaturgy of tension and release that led Boulez to describe Ammann’s music as ‘artistic reflected spontaneity at the highest level’.