Beiseit / Alb-Chehr

Holliger thought about the life and work of the Swiss novelist, essayist and poet Robert Walser(1878-1956) for several decades before setting about the composition of Beiseit . As he did in his Scardanelli-Zyklus, Holliger does much more in Beiseit than merely "setting the text"; the music is loaded with references to Walser's biography and his (often unstable) state of mind.

In Alb-Chehr Holliger utilizes the resources of a "standard" Swiss folklore ensemble to make a "musical version of a Valasian tale about the encounter of a cowherd and his helper with ghosts".