Intimate Rituals

The highlight on this disc of Rǎdulescu’s composition is undoubtedly the seventeen minutes of “Intimate Rituals XI, Opus 63,” where Rǎdulescu and Petra Junken play the sound icon and stir up a hypnotic sturm und drang, while a viola weaves harmonics and overtones through the air of the performance space. It’s an aptly titled composition, as the hermetic tenderness of Rǎdulescu’s rituals have a shivery clairvoyance to them, justifying Rǎdulescu’s statement that they are “very private, maybe even erotic, situations… a sort of spiritual intimacy.” But the other works on this disc, performed with confidence and clarity by violists Vincent Royer and Gérard Caussé (the latter on the spindizzy “Agnus Dei”), are every bit as occluded.