Rosebud is a portrait of the German composer Matthias Krüger in five works. They run from an early piece for organ to rosebud, for dancer, motion sensors and live electronics, created at IRCAM in Paris. The range is wide, from solo and duo writing to music that comes out of movement. What holds it together is a physical idea of sound and a close bond with the performers who shaped each piece.

Krüger was born in 1987 in Ulm and grew up in Brussels and Trier. He studied composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne and took part in IRCAM's Cursus in composition and computer music. The players are Tobias Hagedorn on organ, Claudia Chan on piano, Xavier Larsson Paez on alto saxophone and a viola and accordion duo. In rosebud the dancer Victor Virnot performs with Krüger at the live electronics.

conTemp[s]lations, for organ with mechanical stop actions, is the oldest piece here and lasts almost twenty minutes. Its expansive microtonality and unusual colours unfold as a contemplative continuum, where everything is geared to flowing changes of sound quality and timbral mixture. Three pieces of high density and kinetic energy follow: renk for slightly prepared grand piano, fuckin' A! for alto saxophone, and the three-part duo nun schauervoll einmalig blickt es mich an for viola and accordion. rosebud grew from a collaboration with Virnot in which choreography and live electronics influenced each other until the piece found its final form. The dancer becomes an "extended" musician, a hybrid of human and machine.

Schott's notes place the organ piece as a forerunner of the electronic work: its handling of sound quality already points to what rosebud does with sensors and processing. Krüger's catalogue moves between pure electronics, multisensory mixtures of sound, image and movement, and instrumental pieces for very different combinations. This album presents part of that range. Its production was supported by Kunststiftung NRW, the PRO MUSICA VIVA Maria Strecker-Daelen Stiftung, the Deutsches Studienzentrum Venedig and IRCAM, among others.

CD, Wergo WER 7418 2, released in 2026, total time 79:04.