Credits:

Christfried Brodel, Michael Sanderling

Description:

Jrk Herhelt is a composer from East Germany who studied under Paul Dessau. Although the East German government restricted the performance of contemporary music during his time there, he has remained highly active ever since gaining attention at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in the 1980s, following the easing of restrictions and the fall of the Berlin Wall. He is also known for titling his works simply as Composition or Cantata. The Cantata for Thanksgiving has the feel of a 21st-century Carmina Burana by Orff; it mobilizes a choir, organ, percussion, tape, and even electronic sounds to depict the lively scenes of a festival. In contrast, the Cantata for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity is a rather austere piece of avant-garde music, in which a bass singer and a double basstreated like solo instruments in a concertocreate a tense sense of time and space. The cantata f