"Janárceková's intellectually unpretentious expressionist music never runs the risk of becoming cliche-infected: her will to express herself and her awareness of fragmentariness combine in a subtle sensuality of sound. At every moment the music seems to be 'appropriate': far removed from triviality, and away from fashionable contemplative platitudes." (Dirk Wieschollek) The Slovak Quasars ensemble's conductor Ivan Buffa also doubles as the piano soloist with the Bamberg Symphony in the piano concerto of Viera Janárceková, who surely must be counted as one of the most distinguished female voices in today's European composition landscape.

Chamber opera for singing actors and irregular chamber orchestra.

Since 2003, Jean-Luc Hervé has produced a number of pieces, which he calls concert-installations and which stand at the edge of the concert hall and its exterior, or are frankly conceived for specific outdoor locations. His desire to confront an institutional space (the concert hall) with its public extension was influenced by his understanding of two aesthetic experiences. The first was his discovery of Japanese gardens in Kyoto, while in residence at Villa Kujoyama. “During my stay in Kyoto in 2001,” he writes, “I was struck by the relationship between art and nature in Japan, and more particularly by the way in which the highly constructed architectures of the gardens are conceived in relation to their natural surroundings.” Indeed, all the elements of the garden – stones, bushes, elements of the built environment – are placed according to the views they provide by framing the landscape, and the Japanese, to define this specific relationship, speak of capturing the landscape.

The cycle KHORA, featuring saxophone quartet and microtonal accordion, explores the dynamic interplay between sound, philosophy, and space. Inspired by Plato's Timaeus and Jacques Derrida's reinterpretation of Khora, the nine pieces challenge traditional notions of time and space. Performers from the SIGMA Project and accordionist Inaki Alberdi create a fluid, immersive experience that goes beyond linear hierarchies. Capturing the essence of an ever-changing world, the album reflects Ernst Bloch's idea that sound doesn't just fill but creates space. This musical odyssey, dedicated to the SIGMA Project and Inaki Alberdi, invites listeners to question time's linearity and embrace the transformative power within the music.

Time of year and day, light; warmth, coolness; wind, rain; breath of air, babbling of the stream; People and other beings going about their lives: a strangely unpredictable mix of expected and unexpected events that contribute to the precise conditions of the moment in which we find ourselves. The here and now conveys a special feeling and a unique sound identity. Mason enables us to connect with times, places, people and situations that go far beyond the here and now. Mason is one of the most idiosyncratic composers and sound artists of our time; his works convey contemplative sounds that open our innermost being.

The work of Bolivian composer Cergio Prudencio (La Paz, 1955) is indissolubly linked to the project of the Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos [Experimental Orchestra of Native Instruments] (OEIN), which he co-founded in 1980 and of which he is the emeritus director. It constitutes one of the most challenging adventures in the music that has emerged in Bolivia and Latin America.

Bernhard Lang's album Voice and Ensemble offers a sonic journey through three distinct compositions. In Das Hirn he juxtaposes a solo voice with a chamber ensemble, capturing the end-time force of Durrenmatt's text through intense recitation and dynamic structures. The Travel Agency is on Fire explores William S. Burroughs' cut-up experiments, referencing his innovative techniques in an electroacoustic piece enriched with synthesizers, samplers, and a processed electric guitar. In DW 16.4 'Songbook I.4,' Lang transforms pop songs into a shattered past using the cut-up/scrambler program Abulafia. Lyrics undergo fragmented reconstruction, accompanied by damaged beats and scratch loops, creating a distinctive sonic landscape.

The 21st century is characterized by diverse innovations in the field of classical music: the intensive preoccupation with advanced playing techniques, acoustic principles and the newly discovered complexity of timbres enabled a small number of mostly European composers to redefine “sound excess”. The exploration of frequencies has allowed the sonic extremes of the scores to be linked to both the concept of energetic overexposure and the physical presence of the materials. Essentially, it is the materials that have to change.

On this one-of-a-kind album, the outstanding Danish ensemble Mathias Reumert Group presents three of Cuban composer Louis Franz Aguirre’s strongest pieces, including the large-scale composition for percussion ensemble and flute soloist, Orula (Liturgia de la Adivinación), a journey in extreme sonorities, complex polyrhythms and searing microtonal melodies.

Cycles of Formation from John Ritz presents varying degrees of prescribed musical material and open-form elements. Each piece explores the potential interactions between human performance and interactive computer signal processing algorithms within a particular musical context. Featuring jazz pianist Gabe Evens, and classical percussionist Greg Byrne, and Ritz himself as the album’s composer, cellist, and analog synthesizer, this Ravello Records release delivers a stimulating world of electroacoustic sound, a smooth blend of suspense and innovation.

Delve into the captivating world of contemporary classical music with Giacomo Manzoni's Parole da Beckett. This mesmerizing programme, brought to life by the exquisite soprano Livia Rado alongside the Coro Polifonico Castelbarco, Ensemble Vocale Continuum, and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, a testament to the innovative spirit of composer Giacomo Manzoni. Released by MILANO DISCHI, the album focuses on the title piece, which takes inspiration from the words of Samuel Beckett, weaving a sonic tapestry that blurs the lines between music and literature.

"Inno alla Terra" is a contemporary and experimental piece, with tribal yet slightly classical overtones. The sound is the most important element of the entire piece: the harmony on which the entire composition is based, together with the melody, is deliberately dissonant in order to respect the ancestral intentionality of the sounds and the modernity of the sounds emitted in a mechanical and obstinate manner through the use of a prepared piano, that is, modifying the internal strings of the instrument by adding wooden or metal objects, alternating the natural sound in a rudimentary manner.

Cain and Abel: War Dances for Prepared Piano is the second contemporary composition by the experimental pianist Christian Grifa, transcribed and set to music by paraphrasing bold sequences of notes on the score, along the lines of those of the previous composition, which develop in an anachronistic way the most classic of the biblical episodes after the creation of Man through God (the death and the killing of Abel at the hands of his brother Cain), and at the same time outline sacred, profane, philosophical and historical themes, highlighting the interesting archetypal reasoning that gravitates around the orbit of the same episode, on the which still today the man reflects, and asks himself important questions, without however being able to find a precise answer, bringing back to the mind and to the listener's ear a reflection of the key musical theme of the previous piano piece prepared "Hymn to the Earth”.

When Gaia Falls from composer Bradford Blackburn is an environmental call for action in the face of climate change manifested through musical, literary, and sonic eclecticism as a medium of universality. Its central message? There is no better time to save the future than the present.

The music of Camilo Méndez is a melting pot where a seeming gallimaufry of disparate influences coalesces into harmonious, cohesive works of monumental proportions. It draws inspiration from literature and the visual arts, from geography and philosophy, and from experiences lived on multiple continents. While Méndez’s soundworld has an unquestionable affinity with that of European composers like Helmut Lachenmann and his mentors Pierluigi Billone and Rebecca Saunders, the conceptual underpinning of his works is filled with allusions to composers, writers, and visual artists from his native Latin America, and with subtle references to his own professional pursuits and artistic collaborations in North America and Southeast Asia.