Born in 1974, Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud has established a solid international career, including a substantial presence in the U.S., as featured guest composer at Tanglewood, and with a three-year residency with the
Cleveland Orchestra. Apeiron, the highlighted work on this disc, is scored for a massive orchestra of 101 players, and while it has moments of gossamer delicacy, when Staud pulls out all the stops, he makes good use of all 101 players to create music of cataclysmic power. The title is taken from a cosmological theory developed by Greek philosopher Anaximander to describe the primal chaos that embraced and incorporated all things, and from which all things developed, and it's an apt metaphor for the sound of the music itself. Staud has said that the development of his pieces is organic rather than architectural, and Apeiron has a spontaneity and unpredictability that's more viscerally gripping than analytically explicable. Apeiron is the most intriguing and engaging piece on the CD, but the others, particularly Violent Incidents, for saxophone, wind ensemble, and percussion, are clearly the work of an original thinker who has something compelling to say.
Simon Rattle conducts the
Berlin Philharmonic in a powerful performance of Apeiron, and the performers in the other pieces put the music across with intense conviction. Kairos' sound is, as usual, exemplary in its clarity and depth.