Johannes Schöllhorn (b.1962), is a student of Ferneyhough, Huber and Nunes, and is among Germany’s leading younger generation composers. This is the first release of his music on an American label. 'clouds and sky' is based on a late Nocturne by Gabriel Fauré, which the orchestra plays in absolute slow motion while the piano soloist plays the original Fauré. The slow tempo and the soft orchestration transform the harmonic and melodic progression into something completely different – a big, but transparent, painting inspired by James McNeill Whistler’s painting “Clouds and Sky, Venice.”
'red and blue', originally written for Les Percussions de Strasbourg, is a metallic landscape akin to the large abstract paintings of Barnett Newman, where the listener is completely surrounded by a wave of different tam-tam colors with cymbal and crotales overtones.
'rota', for contrabass clarinet and string quartet, is an intensive sequence of different rotating musical elements, at the same time archaic and complex like the Spanish dance called rota. It shows a wide range of expressions – from harsh and virtuoso counterpoint to lyrical solo parts and poetic sound fields. The clarinet is integrated into the sound of the string quartet as a bass voice, widening the register of the strings.
'A self-same-song' is a wild and virtuoso solo for contrabass clarinet based on Gershwin’s “A Foggy Day.”
