The ‘Pocket Symphonies’ are 12 snapshots of a lonesome soul ending a day, 12 evening moods in different colours – between hunger for life and contemplating mortality. This is what a Beethoven piece and a Pet Shop Boys song have in common. The ‘Pocket Symphonies’ have combined these and will hopefully be transmitted through radios or webplayers to both of those worlds. One could see the ‘Pocket Symphonies’ as 12 children of those two parents – song and symphony. They are short, yet with a symphonic depth. They can sneak into any portable playlist and might even survive in a transient environment. But heard in one sitting on the recording or as a collective live, as we did with the wonderful Fauré Quartett and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony under Kristjan Järvi, this chain of short stories can become like a complex novel.

Listen to Gone from Sven Helbig’s new disc of ‘Pocket Symphonies’, performed by the Fauré Quartett and MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony conducted by Kristjan Järvi on the Gramophone Player, go >>>