Polyphony, the art of waving independent melodic threads into a complex fabric, has always been associated with sophisticated, learned, and rigorous compositions. Its golden rules were crystallized in the Baroque era, and in today’s conservatories are still devotedly passed down to countless fledgling music students. Yet, one can hardly find a great composer who never broke them: Throughout the epochs, the desire for intense expressivity led musicians to add into polyphonic textures a certain degree of harmonic freedom which escalated dramatically in the 20th century. What one should expect then, when hearing the term “polyphonic,” is anything but a stale application of Rubik-cube- like formulas: The polyphonic style has been in constant self-transforming development. The works recorded in this album stand for three idiosyncratic examples of this “Polyphonic Evolution,” all of them combining tradition with novelty.

Liana Püschel