Liza Lim: Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus

This collection of works by Australian composer Liza Lim takes the title of the longest (40 minutes) and most recent (2018), a work commissioned by the Witten Festival of Contemporary Chamber Music (Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik), for the ensemble Klangforum Wien, which performs it here under the direction of Peter Rundel. Lim was inspired by the vision of the five “plastic continents” floating on the oceans and by different forms of “disappearance”, such as the Kauai Moho bird, which sang its last notes in 1987. Using an extensive variety of playing techniques, the musicians of Klangforum create an eerie sonic forest, extremely organic and, ironically, full of life, right up to the final movement, the dawn chorus, which slowly decays. Music to be listened to with a certain gravity in these times… The violinist Sophie Schafleitner is dazzling, as is her colleague Lorelei Dowling on Axis Mundi (2013), for solo bassoon. The album closes with Songs Found In Dream (2005), instrumental songs inspired by the special relationship to reality that is so particular to Aboriginal cultures.