PETER RUZICKA (b.1948): ...über die Grenze for Cello and Orchestra, Rezitativ for Cello and Piano, Nachschrift for Cello and Piano, Sonata for Solo Cello, Stille for Solo Cello.

Description: This intense, compressed cello concerto is in one continuous span, abruptly contrasting music of violent agitation, the soloist seemingly unwittingly drawn into the maelstrom, with calm, static, strangely distant episodes, like the memories of a fading life. A long, drawn-out soliloquy for the soloist, in a shadowed world of whispered harmonics and tolling chimes forms an unforgettable central slow movement, before the frenzied protest against the dying of the light begins again. The outpouring of raw emotion in Rezitativ, with its extreme contrasts of dynamic and degrees of dissonance relate it to Ruzicka's Celan opera, while the three pieces that make up Nachschrift are directly derived from Hölderlin works by the composer, sharing their hallucinatory, hyper-romantic idiom. The solo sonata is a substantial work in seven sections, with a symmetrical arch shape, constantly striving to attain the instrument's highest register, and a wealth of technical and expressive detail. Valentin Radutiu (cello), Per Runberg (piano), Camerata Salzburg; Peter Ruzicka.