The music of the Romanian composer Anatol Vieru (1926-98) is an arresting fusion of classical procedures, avant-garde modernism and folk roots; an accent from his Jewish heritage - he narrowly escaped a pogrom in the ghetto of his native Iasi in 1944 - also underlies his musical impulses. These divergent influences fed into a musical language that is simultaneously familiar and intriguingly unconventional, with hypnotic, quasi-minimalist passages rubbing shoulders with bursts of wild, gypsy-like energy. It can likewise encompass both an epic sense of scale and chuckling good humour.
