Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Peter Rundel

On the first evening we hear the innovative composition »Metastaseis«, whose first performance at the 1955 Donaueschingen Festival brought the Greek composer his breakthrough. The title, which means »Beyond Inflexibility«, shows his will to overcome the standstill of the time created by the predominance of serial music with its strict mathematical rules. He did so, for example, by the effective use of glissandi in the strings – a device also employed in the closing work, »Shaar«. Xenakis himself wrote, »The shock to the senses must be as palpable as the sound of thunder or a glance into an unending chasm.«

The evening starts with the organ work »Apparition de l’église éternelle« by Xenakis’s erstwhile mentor Olivier Messiaen, which describes the appearance of the eternal church in a single dynamic arc. The second half of the concert features a piece by Jani Christou, a contemporary and compatriot of Xenakis’s, who was chiefly influenced by philosophical trends. The title of his work of the same name goes back to the principle of »Enantiodromy« invented by Heraclitus: the conflict between all the different forces to be found in life. In keeping with this idea, Christou’s music forms a powerful, seething cosmos of sound.