"Walden consists of a series of musical sketches inspired by the 1854 novel of the same name by Henry David Thoreau", thus reads the short description of this project by Heiner Goebbels. But those familiar with the oeuvre of the German trans-media conceptualist and composer know that with Goebbels it's never quite that simple. In his 1998 creation Walden, composed for expanded orchestra with speaker, Goebbels incorporates a wide-flung stream of inspirations and approaches, spanning excerpts from Thoreau's Walden, soundscape-design in the spirit of audio plays, arsenals of outlandish instruments and sonic layouts as much at home in the avant-garde as they borrow from popular music, all brought to life with Péter Eötvös conducting and Bob Rutman - a main figure in this project - in the role of the narrator. Rutman can also be heard in a more declamatory role, exclaiming with vehemence, sometimes singing in the khoomei technique, then becoming part of the orchestra playing the steel cello and bow chimes, both instruments of his own design.

In his liner note, the composer explains how he initially envisioned this work as a "counterpoint to the urban imagery of Surrogate Cities (1994). Still, my view of Thoreau's text is far less idyllic, and my relationship to his notion of nature more distant than the original source might suggest. Walden, for me, is a piece about the tension between withdrawal and openness-between individual self-discovery and the constant presence of the outside world. It is not a romantic vision of nature, but rather a reflection on the conditions of our existence today." From trip-hop pastiches and mesmerising ambient structures to imposing orchestral surges on the far-out edges of contemporary music making, Walden is a testament to the visionary ways of Heiner Goebbels, the composer, mid-career, and stands as one of the most innovative chapters of his body of work to come to light yet.