YORK HÖLLER (b.1944): Sphären for Large Orchestra, Der ewige Tag for Mixed Chorus, Large Orchestra and Live Electronics.

Description: The cycle Spheres was written between 2001 and 2005; the final piece was added in 2006, after the death of the composer's wife. The earlier movements are highly evocative nature-music of different character, largely avoiding the avant-gardisms of Höller's earlier years, while making extensive use of modern compositional devices; nonetheless the impression is of an updated romanticism of feeling and emotion, at ties expressed in music with a strong tonal pull and directionality. The final, elegiac 'Sorrow of the Spheres' with its hollow, tolling bells and quotation from Schubert's Death and the Maiden binds the cycle together and adds a higher level of emotional resonance and intensity. 'The Eternal Day' sets texts by Ibn Sharif, Neruda and Georg Heym in a cyclic, mythological journey in music of brooding, post-romantic intensity of feeling (replete with veiled quotations from Mahler's 7th Symphony). Cologne Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra; Semyon Bychkov.