Nina Janßen (clarinet), Ensemble Modern/Franck Ollu, Johannes KalitzkeWergo 6576 2  * * * * *

The titles of these five pieces, written between 2003 and 2008 by German composer Arnulf Herrmann (born 1968), are unusual enough: Fiktive Tänze( Fictive Dances), Monströses Lied( Monstrous Song– it's a clarinet concerto), Terzenseele( Soul of Thirds), Anklang( Echo or Reminiscsence), direkt entrückt( directly deshifted). But the music itself is even more unusual. There's a sense of perfectly logical processes that are diverted towards logic- defying conclusions. The effects are on the lines of some of those elaborately fantastical constructions imagined by Heath Robinson , or, if you prefer one of the analogies of Markus Böggemann's liner note, Karl Valentin's Der Firmlingand Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean. Add in a fondness for gloriously indulgent sonorities and the disorientation of vertiginous microtones, and you've got quite a heady mixture. See wergo.de