A CD of less than 40 minutes of music by Walter Hus (b. 1959) is unlikely to provoke long queues at the record shops, but this is a Factory release and a degree of take-it-or-leave-it experimentalism is perhaps expected, and in principle at least the current recording scene would be the poorer without it, whatever one's response to this particular disc.
Muurwerk is the earlier and better work of the two, a version of a ballet score whose dramatic theme—''a girl trying to break out of four concrete walls, and overcoming internal barriers as well''—inspires spontaneous and lively music, sometimes with an attractively light touch, more often with a drive that calls the neo-classical Stravinsky to mind. The style refuses to be pigeon-holed: at times it is almost romantic, with a melodic flow and sense of harmonic direction that would not have seemed incoherent before 1914. At the other extreme there are indications of unrelieved earnestness, and it is this last quality that rides high in the later string quartet.
The note tells us that this has a technical and poetic scheme—the outer movements representing ''the cruelty of the analytical approach'', the inner aspiring to be ''intuitive, emotional''. All the movements are rather congested in texture, with little response to the particular possibilities of the medium, despite the undoubted variety of mood. Overall I sensed an uneasy mixture of the didactic (as if the piece were designed as an academic exercise in expressing and countering aggressive minimalism) and the parodic—though this latter feature is too half-hearted to make a strong effect. A less closely-focused recording might have eased the sense of congestion, although the performances themselves seem exemplary.'