LÁSZLÓ TIHANYI (b.1956): Back from the Embankment for Ensemble, Night Clauses for Organ (Zsigmond Szathmáry ), The Passing of Neptune for Piano (Gábor Eckhardt), Triton for Bassoon and Ensemble, Attis for Solo Violin (Péter Somogyi), Mahlers Wunderhorn for Mezzo-Soprano, Tenor and Ensemble (Andrea Meláth [mezzo], Zoltán Megyesi [tenor]).

Description: Tihanyi's music is tightly organized and structured, without conforming to any particular system or dogma, the composer thus allowing himself a good deal of imaginative licence. Back from the Embankmen' explores fragments of the composer's own work reimagined after attending rehearsals (at London's Festival Hall complex on the Thames embankment, hence the title) in a freely atonal abstract fantasia for ensemble. Night Clauses for organ is much more concrete, having to do with night fears in music that imaginatively updates all the organ clichés used for that purpose into a post-Messiaen vocabulary (making some use of percussion stops on the organ used for this recording). The Neptune and Triton pieces explore astronomical imagery, the first in chordal piano textures, the latter a more active ensemble work with a colorful concertante rôle for solo bassoon. The music's heterogeneous layered textures hint at some mysterious astrological subtext. Attis is a lively narrative for solo violin based on Greek myth, illustrated in quasi-vocal lines of texturally distinct violin playing styles. Mahlers Wunderhorn sets a Wunderhorn text that Mahler did not use, avoiding direct musical reference to Mahler - Tihanyi's vocabulary is of the next generation, that of Schoenberg - while capturing something of the nocturnal atmosphere of his Nachtmusik movements in a setting of the poem 'Longing' interspersed with extracts from Mahler's correspondence. German-English texts. Ensemble Intermodulation.