Changeover

The music of the Slovenian-born composer Vito Žuraj which is portrayed here is powerful and extremely differentiated. Special emphasis is given to the works with multi-layered stereophonic sound concepts which are typical of Žuraj. The SACD format makes it possible that the spatial arrangement of different instrumental groups can be experienced immediately.

Žuraj's way of composing ranges between intuition and structural principles which he implements by means of an algorithmic notation assistant developed by himself. He often draws inspiration for his pieces from his personal passion of tennis. Such inspiration can not only be found in work titles like 'Changeover', their content aspects, like the change in sunlight, shadowing or the audience's perspective, are rather transferred 'to the tension between noises and fixed pitches, between solo, unison and polyphony, between passivity and active motion', wrote Egbert Hiller in the accompanying text.

Even more important for the development of the pieces is, for Žuraj, the collaboration with the musicians, particularly with the Ensemble Modern. He developed, for example, the horn concerto 'Hawk-eye' with Saar Berger who plays the solo part on this CD, together with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. With the Symphony Orchestra of the Hessian Radio, the Ensemble Modern interprets the large-scale work 'Changeover' for instrumental groups and orchestra and, especially for this portrait, recorded the two ensemble works 'Restrung' and 'Runaround'.

An additional DVD also contains Žuraj's percussion trio 'Top Spin' which includes music-theatre elements. The video was produced by the ComputerStudio of the University of Music at Karlsruhe.

co-production of Slowenischer Rundfunk and Deutscher Musikrat gemeinnützige Projektgesellschaft mbH,
production of Hessischer Rundfunk