The American composer received his education at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. His illustrious professors were Günther Schuller, Gyorgy Ligeti and Halim El-Dabh, who is a specialist in electronic music. He is thirty years old now, he lives in New York, and he is one of the most requested artists of his generation - an important new artistic voice, wrote The New York Times. Musical works have been commissioned to him by prestigious ensembles; he also composes with special dedications. We can already find in his compositions catalogue four symphonies, concertos, one cantata, two operas, pages of chamber music and countless song series. It is obvious that he focuses on music followed by text. As a matter of fact, Mohammed Fairouz, who was a precocious child, composed his first song series, based on Oscar Wilde's verses, at the age of seven.

We are presenting you a very recent album of Mohammed Fairouz, released by Deutsche Grammmophon - Follow, Poet, which is an album structured on a distinctive idea - the strong bond between word and music. And Mohammed Fairouz excels at this chapter. To him, "poetry is what can offer us the means to surpass the confusing present and can reach that something which is outside of time, which is eternal. In an age when the search for meaning has never been more critical, it seems to me that a return to language, to a form of respect with which we treat each other through the channel of language; that would be the first step in solving the problems of human communication."

What is the concept of this album? This new release opens with a recording of John F. Kennedy making a speech concerning "when power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations… when power corrupts, poetry cleanses."

The speech is followed by Audenesque, a song cycle based on the poems of the English poet W. H. Auden and on the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who is a winner of the Nobel Prize, accompanied by an orchestra - pure poetry embedded in the music flow and, according to the specialists' opinion, built with echoes from Mahler, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. His music has a nostalgic note; it brings clear colours, with a clear miniatural perspective, which sometimes has an exuberant generosity. It is not coincidental that the Grammophone magazine is describing Mohammed Fairuz as a Schubert of the new millennium.

Next in the album's contents, the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, who is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, recites the verses of the Audenesque song cycle, and then another piece from J.F. Kennedy's speech follows and then a Ballet Suite in five movements - Sedat. The work is dedicated to the memory of the Egyptian president Muḥammad Anwar el-Sādāt, and it follows some essential moments from his biography. The music flows cinematographically, with tonal reflexes, but also with modal reflexes of Oriental inspiration, with minimalist accents and traditional notes. The luxuriant print betrays the huge talent of this composer, who belongs to the latest generation of artists.

The string of action brings again to the attention the voice of the poet Paul Muldoon, this time reciting verses in W. B. Yeats' memory. In other words, this album, which was released on 26^th January, 2015, by the Deutsche Grammophon press, offers us poetry and music alternatingly, actually it "proposes a more profound experience in the sphere of intercepting the art, of the gesture of listening and receiving an emotional answer, because that is the purpose of art - of inspiring and of moving deeply", declared Elisabeth Sobol, who is the CEO of the Universal Music Classics and who created this new Return to Language series, under the patronage of the Deutsche Grammophon label.

If this experience has caught your attention, you may include among your preferences the Follow, poet album, by Mohammed Fairouz and express your opinion on Radio Romania Music's Vote for the Classical Music Album of the Year 2015 campaign website. Mohammed Fairouz is the youngest contemporary composer promoted by the Deutsche Grammophone press, during its latest series, Return to Language.

(On CD Review section, during the Arpeggio programme - 27^th February, starting at 10:00)