Three works by Detlev Müller-Siemens, a pupil of Ligeti, written between 1977 and 1981, when he was barely in his twenties. The variations on a Schubert Ländler for ten players, Under Neonlight I for chamber orchestra and the Piano Concerto with Volker Banfield show a composer moving freely between the Viennese past and the sound of the city. Otto Paul Burkhard heard in it funk rock as much as "a Schubertian bouquet of mourning or cool jazz à la Miles Davis".

Detlev Müller-Siemens, born in Hamburg on 30 July 1957, is a German composer and conductor. He studied at the Hamburg Musikhochschule from 1970 and with György Ligeti from 1973 to 1980, with a year in Paris in 1977-78 studying with Olivier Messiaen. In 1974 he won the Kranichstein Music Prize for a trio for violin, cello and piano. He also trained as a conductor, with Christoph von Dohnányi in Hamburg from 1978 to 1980, and was assistant conductor at the Freiburg theatre from 1986 to 1988. The Variationen über einen Ländler von Schubert are played by Ensemble 13 under Manfred Reichert, Under Neonlight I by members of the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Basel under John Carewe, and the concerto by the Sinfonieorchester des Südwestfunks Baden-Baden under Kazimierz Kord.

The Variationen über einen Ländler von Schubert for ten instrumentalists (1977/78) take a small Austrian dance as their starting point and run to almost fifteen minutes. The ten are flute and piccolo, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, two violins, viola and two cellos. Under Neonlight I (1980), for chamber orchestra, is the shortest work, under ten minutes. The Konzert für Klavier und Orchester (1980/81), at seventeen minutes, gives Banfield a large part against an orchestra that includes an electric organ. It was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic for its centenary and first performed at the Donaueschinger Musiktage on 17 October 1981 by the same soloist, orchestra and conductor heard here. The three pieces together come to 42 minutes.

Burkhard's review called the result "a thoroughly fascinating hybrid", and Wergo still quotes him for this disc. Müller-Siemens later taught composition at the Music Academy in Basel from 1991 and in Vienna from 2005, and he wrote operas, concertos and chamber music.

CD, Wergo WER 60503-50, released in 1988 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik.