NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE is an extraordinary album that combines central works of contemporary music with fascinating musical references to the past and future.

Peter Tilling's two-part work Fragment.Mirroring leads us into an intoxicating soundscape with expressively processed gestures of Renaissance music. The first movement, imbued with a multi-layered sound, evokes a kind of acoustic architecture – the second, more free and stylistically different, brings hope and movement into the piece. Another Tilling composition, Ein Schatten, schwebend, is exemplary of his exploration of Wagner's harmonic world. Inspired by Campana's poetry and the Elegy in A flat major, a sound sculpture between memory, condensation and dissolution is created.

Tristan Murail's impressive work Near Death Experience reflects – between spectral analysis and emotional visual power – the experience of transition, inspired by Arnold Böcklin's ‘Isle of the Dead’. A journey into the unknown, into the interior of perception.

Wolfgang Rihm's IN FRAGE is a theatrical, often fractured work that ranges from expressive outbursts to enigmatic aloofness. Central motifs reappear like figures of memory and point to an open, questioning ending.

Birke J. Bertelsmeier's Verwachsen creates a tonal organism from finely interwoven compositional techniques: individual voices merge into a colourful line – an aesthetically radical, yet touchingly poetic piece.

Finally, we encounter Hans Jürgen von der Wense, an almost forgotten genius: Peter Tilling transforms his Musik für Klavier I–V into a colourful version for chamber orchestra, Musik für Ensemble I–V. The sound world is close to Schönberg, Scrjabin and the artist’ association November Group – and reveals an uncompromising artistic universe. This CD is an impressive panorama of new music that explores the boundaries between life, memory and transcendence.