The music of the Romanian composer Anatol Vieru (1926–98) is an arresting fusion of classical procedures, avant-garde modernism and folk roots; the influence of his Jewish heritage – he narrowly escaped a pogrom in the ghetto of his native Iaşi in 1944 – also underlies his musical impulses. These divergent influences fed into a musical language that is simultaneously familiar and intriguingly unconventional, with hypnotic, quasi-minimalist passages rubbing shoulders with bursts of wild, gypsy-like energy. It can likewise encompass both an epic sense of scale and chuckling good humour.