If you mix every colour of paint together, you end up with black. Similarly, the darkness in the music of Lera Auberbach (b. 1973) consists of every imaginable shade of colour, from pitch darkness to dazzling light. The composer thus captures the mercuriality of life and the human psyche. Her music sometimes also depicts a dance with the inescapable: the struggle against Fate, the inexorable passing of time, an unattainable dream – but always with black humour and a dark though starlit sky. ‘Many composers create something “beautiful”, outside human reality,’ according to the Delta Piano Trio, who worked hard with Auberbach in preparing for this album. ‘Instead, Lera’s music is raw as well as human. She never eases up on what she wants to express, which would rob the music of all its fervour.’