NEOS herewith presents the fifth release in a series of illustrious recordings dedicated to the music by Peter Ruzicka. As a composer, conductor and artistic director Ruzicka (*1948) for many years counts among the most influential personalities of international cultural life. At the same time his art constitutes an autonomous musical cosmos in itself, marked by impressive métier, auratic sound poetics and a profound consciousness of tradition.

On the present third edition of his orchestral music, Ruzicka pays tribute to some of the leading cultural figures of history: to Richard Wagner, Paul Celan and Hans Werner Henze. A Wagner memorial composition by Franz Liszt for Ruzicka provides the basis for an orchestral ‚palimpsest’ as well as for a kind of compositional ‚retracing’ for piano; RECHERCHE (-IM INNERSTEN) is a chorus scene fom the heart of his confessional ‚Celan’ opera; for Hans Werner Henze he had composed SPIRAL, a work for a quartet of French horns and orchestra: A music of anger and sorrow – according to Siemens Prize winner Peter Gülke’s words in his introductory text for this CD.