The Germans Helmut Oehring and Iris ter Schiphorst are among today’s most fashionable composers; their list of commissions is one of the longest in Europe. Entirely autodidact, they have invented an original musical language, both fastidious and totally out of gear. Immersed in images and the cinema, they present their scores as long video-clips, zapping from short musical clichés comprising reminiscences and quotations, to passages of impossibly virtuosic instrumental writing. This CD, recorded and mixed with techniques from the world of rock, highlights the aesthetic paradox of this end-of-century music: craftsmanship and high-tech, full of invention and steeped in fatigue. After a Terry Riley record, the Ictus ensemble shows another facet of its broad stylistic spectrum. The collaboration of this high-flying ensemble and these two German composers has given birth to something quite out of the ordinary.
