The booklet has photographs of each composer and they are also allowed to write about their own music. I never think that this is a good idea and I speak as one who has had to do it himself. Moral: always try to get someone to write about you. (I would also add try to get someone else to perform or conduct your music). When Maximilian Kreuz writes in the third person "the composer has concerned himself with a new kind of chromatic tonality, which in this piece determines the harmonic language" I wonder why he didn’t write it in the first person. Is it because he goes on to tell us "creation of this work was supported by the City of Vienna", an attempt to place himself outside the intimate and into the public arena. Despite his rambling description this is the most successful piece on the CD. Possibly it falls under the shadow of his fellow Austrian, the late Gottfried von Einem (b.1918) but it is none the worse for that. Its six movements evolve logically and with intensity.

-- Gary Higginson, MusicWeb International