Höller: Sphären; Der Ewige Tag

Sphären, a 40-minute cycle of six pieces for large orchestra and live electronics, completed in 2006, won York Höller this year's prestigious Grawemeyer award for composition. Since he was a pupil of Stockhausen in the 1970s and one of the pioneering composers to work with Boulez at Ircam in Paris in the 80s, Höller has produced a stream of impressive orchestral works, often using electro-acoustic techniques, and his own musical language has become gradually more simplified in the process. The title of Sphären alludes to the ancient Greek idea of the four natural elements – earth, air, fire and water – and the movements all carry evocative titles – Song of the Clouds, Wind Chimes, Layers of Earth, and so on. The music, too, is strikingly pictorial, often sounding like early Stravinsky, with an added veneer of electronic sounds; it's highly effective, just as the choral settings of texts by Ibn Sharaf, Heym and Neruda in Der Ewige Tag (from 2002, again with live electronics) have a genuine allure about them. Höller, it seems, has supplemented his old musical rigour with something more immediately communicative.