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Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 2
3-CD Set. Recorded between 1960 and 1973, the original eighteen LPs that comprise Earle Brown's legendary Contemporary Sound Series have been highly sought after in the secondary market since 1978 when they were discontinued. These rare and historically important recordings of international avant-garde music have been carefully digitized and remastered by the Earle Brown Music Foundation. Volume two includes music by Nono (Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica), Bruno Maderna (Serenata No. 2), Luciano Ber…
Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 5
"With Earle Brown -- A Life in Music -- Volume 5, Wergo has once again dug up treasures of contemporary music from the 1960s and 1970s. The 3-CD set not only contains one of the first recordings of Charles Ives's 'Concord Sonata by Aloys Kontarsky but is also a testimony to the virtuosity of Severino Gazzelloni who is, without doubt, one of the greatest flutists of the 20th century. In addition, it contains music from the group Sonic Arts Union with the four pioneers of electronic music: David B…
Silence Beyond Time
*2024 stock* “Between stood and still stands for the simultaneity of things that are really mutually exclusive” (Peter Michael Hamel, 2005). “Originally we wanted to call the project B.A.C.H.,” Peter Michael Hamel re-calls, when, in 1970, they were looking for the most unusual name possible for a extremely unusual formation. “Naturally we chose in it in part in allusion to the immortal baroque composer of that name, but above all the letters stood for “Between All Chairs.” That’s exactly how we …
Fluxus
2025 stock Three rather meditative pieces from the repertoire of "Ars Acustica", but nevertheless: Fluxus! The New York-born artists whose radio plays are collected on this CD, Philip Corner, Alison Knowles, and George Brecht, have appeared together in performances, and they are also connected by their relationship to John Cage's aesthetic, by work with chance operations, and by Zen. Explaining Fluxus is like wanting to hold a river in your hand.
Komposition Für Streichquartett / Komposition Für Violine / Disappearing Musics
2025 stock Jakob Ullmann's career can be measured by the obstacles placed in his path. It was in the teeth of these obstacles that he learnt his craft: they have left their mark on his artistic stance, and the fact that he ultimately overcame them proved the rightness of his approach. For a number of reasons, Ullmann's works failed to blend into the musical landscape of the former state of East Germany. Avoiding peremptory gestures and unalterable laws, his restrained scores seemed strange and a…
Etudes Australes
*2022 stock* 'Etudes Australes was composed specifically for Grete Sultan, so this album is among the definitive recordings. As an indeterminate piece for solo piano (okay, well, a "duet for two hands"), this sounds very similar to Music of Changes, Winter Music, etc. Here, though, Cage generates indeterminacy by turning once again to using star charts as tools of composition, as he did previously in the wonderful Atlas Eclipticalis.
In a way, I find the piano to be more suited to star charts th…
Und so weiter / Music Promenade
With the legendary “Studio Reihe Neuer Musik” series, Wergo created a trademark of advanced contemporary music in the Sixties of the past century already. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the label now releases these highlights of 20th-century music history in an excellent sound quality on CD for the first time.In "Und so weiter pour piano électrique et bande magnétique", the piano and tape sounds become interwoven in a complex dialogue. "Music Promenade. Mixage originale“ – created in t…
Hesse Between Music (Dichtung & Musik)
*2024 stock* Produced in 1974 by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, this synthesis of Hermann Hesse’s writing with Peter Michael Hamel’s music, of spirituality and art, of sitar and church organ, of meditative sounds and jazz rhythms, of silence and passion remains unique today and in the meanwhile it has obtained a legendary reputation. Further releases of the formation Between from the 1970s are re-released as cds on the Intuition label: "Einstieg - Re-Entry", "And the Waters Opened", "Silence Beyond Time…
Musica Da Camera
*2022 stock* The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki used to write chamber music even as a student in Krakow. He was writing the chamber music works for himself, then already an accomplished violinist, and his fellow students (The title "Sonata for Violin and Piano" from 1953 has only recently been published.). A specialty of these early works are Penderecki's inventions with which he altered the sound of the stringed instruments, indeed almost to the point of being completely unrecognizable. W…
Kammerkonzert / Ramifications / Lux Aeterna / Atmosphères
*2022 stock* These pieces (mostly recorded within a couple years of Ligeti writing them) are superb in that unsettling way of most of Ligeti's music. The "Kammerkonzert" is amazing - one of the best things I've heard of his. It's great to hear the harpsichord and Hammond organ in this context and unique in modern music. The uniqueness is really just Ligeti's style and the instruments don't matter so much, whether it's the giant orchestra used for "Atmospheres" or the choral effects in the most f…
For Philip Guston
*2022 stock* Performed by Julia Breuer (flutes), Matthias Engler (vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, tubular bells), Elmar Schrammel (piano, celesta). Recorded 2007. One of Feldman's classic long-term late works, written in 1984. Wergo is proud to present Morton Feldman's four-hour-long trio For Philip Guston, performed by the ensemble Breuer-Engler-Schrammel. Feldman disagreed with those who regarded his works since the 1970s as being too long. 'In music, it's very difficult to distinguish betw…
Circles · Sequenza I · Sequenza III · Sequenza V
Wergo presents Luciano Berio's compositions Circles · Sequenza I · Sequenza III · Sequenza V.
Requiem / Aventures / Nouvelles Aventures
György Ligeti's "Requiem" for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two mixed choirs and orchestra is one of his most impressive compositions - especially, when directed by Michael Gielen - and at the same time "the" requiem of the 20th century: Sound which is chromatically layered moves gradually from the lower registers to the higher, thus changing from mourning sounds into the promise of the eternal light. In the Kyrie the polyphonic net which was previously static begins to move gently. It was a part of t…
Spectral Malsconcities
In modern experimental music, and especially among a number of musician-composers emerging in America during the Sixties, a fixation on process and awareness became a structural hallmark, exploring the gradual change of sonic materials, built environments, and the human body. Though much maligned as a term by its practitioners, figures like Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley were among these 'minimal' composers; askew of them were electroacoustic explorers like Alvin Luci…
American Works For Balinese Gamelan Orchestra
This recording is the product of a remarkable intercultural musical experiment. It contains five strikingly varied works, each one the fruit of musical cross-pollination between America and the island of Bali. The three American composers represented here－Evan Ziporyn, Michael Tenzer and Wayne Vitale, along with their peers in the Sekar Jaya ensemble－have, since 1979, devoted an extraordinary amount of effort, intelligence, and talent to the study and performance of traditional Balinese music. T…
The Oak of the Golden Dreams
Important reissue of two historic minimalist albums, originally released on LP via the Advance label and out of print for decades now. Mastered from original tapes according to the composers original specifications. Packaged with informative liner notes by Kyle Gann, including an overview discography for seminal works within the field of minimalism. This timely CD reissue combines two LPs from the Advance label-Richard Maxfield’s Electronic Music and Harold Budd’s The Oak of the Golden Dreams-bo…
Modes Réels Collectifs
This album, by virtue of its initial founder characteristic from 1981, shows this concern about participating to the interaction of the energy of the future, to the reciprocal mediation linked to the productive activity of the world. Like Vivenza will say: « By working and through the strengths of work, in the sonorous magma of the industrial society, at the heart of the forges and weirs, of the rolling mills and power stations, reactors and artificial intelligence, nature reveals its dynamic ch…
Veriti Plastici
Veriti Plastici, the third part of the first works of Vivenza, recorded and completed in 1983, represents a fundamental step in the definitive formalisation of the bruitist sonorous views. Made of very objective industrial atmospheres, this recording will be the bridge between the pure experimental approach, and the rigorous structuring of the works that will be produced later (Fondements Bruitistes - 1984, Réalités Servomécaniques - 1985, Machines - 1985, etc.).
The release of …
Fondements Bruitistes 2
For the first time ever the entire "Fondements Bruitistes" session from 1984 with unreleased tracks. « The Bruitist Foundations of Action » (french title « Fondements Bruitistes d'Action), which came out in october 1984, opens the period in Vivenza's work on Bruitist sound when he started to incorporate the question of the relationship that holds between the technological and mechanical industrial fabric – which makes up the reality of the modern world – and the human and socia…
Fondements Bruitistes 1
For the first time ever the entire "Fondements Bruitistes" session from 1984 with unreleased tracks. « The Bruitist Foundations of Action » (french title « Fondements Bruitistes d'Action), which came out in october 1984, opens the period in Vivenza's work on Bruitist sound when he started to incorporate the question of the relationship that holds between the technological and mechanical industrial fabric – which makes up the reality of the modern world – and the human and socia…