On the tenth anniversary of Horatiu Radulescu’s death on 25 September 2018, NEOS presents a comprehensive document of a wonderful artistic friendship: the complete recording of Radulescu’s piano music, featuring the pianist Ortwin Sturmer.

Horatiu Radulescu, born in Bucharest on 7 January, lived in French exile from 1969 and became one of the leading exponents of spectralism; nonetheless, his music also has unmistakable roots in his home country of Romania. He was considered a sonic magician, a ‘philosopher of sound’. One of his decisive encounters, in 1990, was with Ortwin Sturmer; it was for him that Radulescu composed the second, third and fourth of the Zen-inspired Lao tzu Sonatas, as well as the large-scale piano concerto The Quest. It would have been wrong not to include the latter in this SACD box set - with the same musicians as the premiere, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Lother Zagrosek.