ARIBERT REIMANN (b.1936): Spiralat Halom for Large Orchestra, 9 Stücke for Orchestra, Eingedunkelt for Countertenor Solo.

Description: “Dream Spirals” was originally conceived at the time when news was emerging about the first Iraq war, and images of burning oil wells and billowing smoke. This found its way into the composer's dreams, and hence into this piece. A gritty, dark, often violent twenty-minute orchestral essay, the work is in Reimann's characteristically tough, rather abrasive language; unrepentantly modernist but stopping well short of the avant garde, its links to romanticism and even tonality still very clear. At the end, after the turbulence subsides, a kind of hymn emerges in the woodwinds, voices of hope but still backed by the strained string harmonic motif heard at the beginning. The nine brief Celan settings for unaccompanied voice were written in 1992; almost immediately the composer was moved to complement them with nine larger orchestral elaborations which actually share very little in character or material aside from brief referential quotations in each one. The songs are vocally intricate and of operatic expressiveness. The orchestral works are dramatic character pieces, vividly orchestrated, and each suggesting in a few brief minutes some scene or narrative - they could in fact be orchestral interludes from Reimann's acclaimed stage works - though different ones from those of the songs. Tim Severloh (countertenor), North German Radio Symphony Orchestra; Christoph Eschenbach.