Leopold Brauneiss: Kykloi

The circle—a symbol of infinity, of cyclical becoming and passing away—is at the heart of Leopold Brauneiss's new album. The title track, Kykloi (Greek for “circles”), translates this motif into music: two circles of keys move in opposite directions from D major, moving apart, crossing each other, and finally coming together again at the starting point – a resonant process of approach, distance, and return. Mathematical rigor and organic growth merge to create a fascinating soundscape.

Brauneiss' interest in circular processes, cyclical structures, and the balance between simplicity and complexity is also reflected in his other works. (Nearly a) Pizzicato Polka is humorous and light-footed, a tongue-in-cheek play on Viennese sounds and charming breaks. Farewell, a personal piece about parting, combines formal rigor with emotional depth, while the arrangement of the Purgatorio movement from Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony is a loving homage to one of the great masters of music history.

The piano trio Métamorphoses nocturnes explores musical processes of transformation between day and night, while the miniatures – Bagatellen and Préludes – present themselves as pointed snapshots in which the ever-same constantly reveals itself in new and surprising ways.

Special impressions are reflected in the elegy In In Memoriam F. C. – a musical obituary for Friedrich Cerha – and in Callanish, inspired by the monumental stone circles of the Scottish Hebrides.

The program is rounded off by settings of the profound and humorous quatrains of the mystic Rūmī and the linguistically precise Siebzehnsilber (Seventeen Silvers) by the poet Rudolf Kraus. In all his works, Brauneiss remains true to his ideal: music that is like a snowflake – crystalline, clear, transient, and full of delicate structures.