This is the second CD in Wergo’s Zimmermann edition to reach me. Like the first (2/03) it concentrates on works from the 1950s which show the composer moving between a post-Stravinskian neo-Classicism and the kind of avant-garde expressionism favoured by the Darmstadt school.

The works included are not as substantial as those on the earlier disc, and all save Omnia tempus habent derive from incidental or background music. The longest, Metamorphose, was written for what sounds like a rather experimental wordless film, and although it rapidly establishes an effective kind of jazzy, ‘wrong-note’ style, with echoes of 1920s Hindemith and Milhaud, all the movements except the last run out of steam well before the end. You probably need to see the film while hearing the music.

The short suite, Un petit rien, stems from incidental music to a surrealistic comedy by Marcel Aymé. Zimmermann’s light, but not too light, touch is well displayed here, with sinister overtones keeping comic whimsy at bay. Das Gelb und das Grün (‘The Yellow and the Green’), music for a puppet play on an environmental theme, also projects some darker shades, despite (according to the booklet) an unequivocally happy ending.

Finally, the cantata Omnis tempus habent (1957) finds Zimmermann setting verses from the book of Ecclesiastes for soprano and ensemble in an avant-garde style which has something in common with the music Boulez and Maderna, among others, were writing at the time. It’s a dramatic, very un-jazzy piece, but it’s also a shade anonymous, the composer still feeling his way towards a personal voice. The performances are fine, the recordings a bit dry and confined in Wergo’s studio-based fashion, but bringing a sharply defined clarity to Zimmermann’s well-varied instrumental colours.