Sacrum Et Profanum

Description

Long awaited by their followers, at last a new release from the Romanian spectralist masters. A high fidelity recording made in 2017 at the Sacrum et Profanum Festival in Krakow, it features five new compositions, magisterially interpreted by an expanded Hyperion International Ensemble (inc. Stephen O'Malley) under the baton of both Ilan Volkov and Iancu himself. Four of the five pieces are by Ana Maria: Murmur, for ensemble, Axis vii, for double bass (a tour de force by Zach Rowden), Mineral Matters ii (full ensemble and electric guitars, an amazing piece) and Nouvelle Archae for tape and voice. To close, lancu conducts his own rollercoaster of opposites, Sacrum & Profanum. . Large sound, extraordinary players, intense and hallucinatory music. Born in Bucharest in 1961, Ana-Maria Avram studied composition and piano at the CNSM in Bucharest, winning First Prize in piano, writing, analysis, counterpoint, harmony, orchestration and musical easthetics. Then a DEA in musical aesthetics at the Sorbonne in Paris under Costin Miereanu. She won First Prize for Composition from the Academy of Romania in 1994. Joined the Hyperion Ensemble in 1988 as conductor and co-director with Iancu Dumitrescu. Her compositions have been performed at major festivals all round the world and she has received numerous commissions. She co-founded with Dumitrescu the International Festival of Electro-acoustic and Computer-Assisted Music at Bucharest, the International SPECTRUM XXI festival and the main Romanian organisation for electro-acoustic music, CREMAC. She is considered to be one of the most important Romanian composers of her generation. Iancu Dumitrescu (1944), conductor, composer, musicologist, is a leading figure in the world-wide spectral music movement. After graduating from the Bucharest Academy of Music, he studied musical phenomenology and conducting with Sergiu Celibidache. In 1966 he co-founded the first electro-acoustic music studio at the Bucharest Conservatoire. He founded the Hyperion Ensemble in 1976, a group of musicians and composers dedicated to the creation of a new programme of the Romanian avant garde.