KAIJA SAARIAHO (b.1952): Circle Map for Reciter and Orchestra (Arshia Cont [reciter], Susanna Mälkki [conductor]), DETLEV GLANERT (b.1960): Insomnium (Markus Stenz [conductor]), KLAAS DE VRIES (b.1944): Providence (David Robertson [conductor]), RICHARD RIJNVOS (b.1964): Antarctique (Mälkki [conductor]), ANON./JAMES MACMILLAN (b.1959): Hodie puer nascitur.

Description: MacMillan adapts a Mediaeval antiphon by layering his own polyphony over the original, which remains recognisably intact within the surrounding, glittering orchestral mechanism. Glanert's piece is an orchestral study for his opera Solaris, based on Stanislav Lem's twice-filmed novel. T he novel's themes of manipulated memories, dreamscapes and mysterious and ambiguous alien processes are matched in Glanert's broodingly atmospheric score, a mass of slowly moving dense harmony from which distant glowing threads of melody emerge and recede, now serene, now threatening, building to a nightmarish climax. De Vries' work also has a somber, oppressive feel, layering rather more dissonant material over a similarly tonal landscape, and also incorporating, as it were, a work within a work in the form of a percussion-driven sub-ensemble playing altogether different, funk-influenced material which gradually supplants the symphonic score. Antarctique is part of Rijnvos' cycle evoking the continents. An evocative soundscape of jagged, monumental, echoing gestures in repeated, pulsating patterns, the work is intended to surround the audience with spatially generated percussion sounds, suggesting the limitless, alien landscape of Antarctica. Poems by Rumi serve as the foundation for Saariaho's piece, spoken in Persian by an electronically transformed recorded voice and surrounded by complex spiraling patterns, evoking the Sufic whirling dervishes, in the composer's characteristic exotic, intensely colored and inventive orchestration. Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.