With ‚Vom Willen und Tod‘ (‚Of Will and Death‘), Gellért Szabó’s Ideal Orchestra pushes even further into existential weight and musical scale after ‚Live at Berghain‘ (2025). To record the album, the ensemble from Leipzig secluded themselves in a church, where they captured four compositions by Szabó alongside two newly reworked excerpts from Brahms’ Requiem.

A sense of inner struggle runs through the entire record: the drive toward transcendence in the shadow of mortality, and the pull back toward one’s own origins after the death of the father. Out of the tension between belonging and the abyss, something deeply personal takes shape. Vast walls of sound, built from layered orchestras and choirs, give way to fragile songs of mourning. At times, the music feels like the finales of all Mahler symphonies heard at once. Between fear of death, love, and grand aspiration, the album unfolds with relentless intensity, monumental in conception, existential in sentiments, and driven to the very edge of what can still be heard.