At the Edge of Time

At the Edge of Time is an homage to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: patterns and motifs from his Requiem (K. 626) create an emotional meshwork held together melodically by the solo cor anglais – the traditional instrument for death and lamentation. A turbulent central section, inspired by the rhythms and motifs of the Dies Irae, leads through a frenzied climax with strange, existentially harrowing clusters of sound into sudden silence and nothingness. Over a long pedal tone, the music shudders one final time and quotes Mozart’s Lacrimosa in the same long and fragmented manner as it appears in his own hand in the last of his surviving compositions. Enjott Schneider