GLORIA COATES (b.1938): Symphony No. 15 (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Michael Boder), Cantata da Requiem (Teri Dunn [soprano], Talisker Players, Toronto), Transitions (Ars Nova Ensemble Nuremberg; Werner Heider).

Description: Coates' newest symphony, commissioned by the European Festival Passau for Mozart's 250th anniversary year, will not disappoint her fans. Though a quote from the Ave Verum Corpus, K.618 appears, backwards and forwards in the Puzzle Canon second movement, the whole work continues to explore her unique sound world of otherworldly glissandos and masses of texture. You'll find this at a chamber level in 1984's Transitions but in the early (1972) Cantata there is a more lyrical young composer at work (although there is plenty of atonality and dissonance but concocted for expressive effect in a piece inspired by a tour of Dachau and the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. German-English texts.