After his immigration to the west in 1991, Giya Kancheli abandoned the expansive, symphonic approach he had cultivated during his years in Georgia, and opted instead to compose music for smaller, more manageable ensembles. The works on this ECM New Series disc reflect Kancheli's changed course and his simplified, if still wide-ranging, palette. Diplipito is a cryptic term, coined by poet Joseph Brodsky to mean "my work of silence, my mute creation," and Kancheli uses it to suggest a neutral state between expression and meaninglessness, implied in the singer's indistinguishable words and the cello's vaguely articulated lines.

Austrian composer Thomas Larcher, born in 1963, has the singular ability to write music that can sound sweet without sounding naïve or simplistic. Larcher can also certainly write music that's powerfully assertive, but if his work has a characteristic sound, it could be described as emotionally expressive in a meditative, often melancholy way. Naunz, for piano (1989), couldn't be called easy; Naunz's musical logic tends to be unpredictable and is seldom immediately obvious, although close attention reveals an emotional through-line, and it is full of beautiful, clarion major thirds that are used utterly unconventionally, but that help keep the listener anchored.

This disc continues Thomas Demenga's project of juxtaposing Bach cello suites with contemporary compositions—by Elliott Carter (12/90), Heinz Holliger, and now Sandor Veress, whose music we can hear growing out of, and away from, its neo-classical roots in Bach's polyphony.

The four chamber works by Austrian Thomas Larcher recorded here show that's he's a composer to watch out for. His compositional voice is strikingly unencumbered by adherence to any orthodoxy, and his work is direct in its emotional and intellectual communication. My Illness Is the Medicine I Need, for soprano, violin, cello, and piano, is particularly effective; its aphoristic texts come from a Benetton "Colors" magazine that included photographs of psychiatric hospitals and quotations from their patients. Larcher's understated text setting allows the voices of the patients to be heard with unaffected bleakness and it is strongly moving. Even though it uses a contemporary harmonic language, the string quartet Ixxu (1998-2004) is old-fashioned in its emotional clarity. Its last movement, "ruhig," is genuinely peaceful and brings to mind the serenity of Arvo Pärt's Fratres. His 1990 quartet Cold Farmer is similarly direct and generous in inviting the listener in, and here again the slow movement is especially deeply felt and engaging.