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Musica Da Camera: Ensemble Dissonanzen
The selections of chamber music on this CD by Hans Werner Henze (b.1926) tend toward his lyrical side, and with an emphasis on compositions derived from his theater pieces. The CD's repertoire especially suits the Naples-based Ensemble Dissonanzen, featuring the talents of its guitarist, Marco Cappelli. The 'Sonatina for Flute and Piano' was written in 1947, its style owing something to both Fortner (Henze's teacher in Heidelberg at this time) and Hindemith. 'Boulevard Solitude,' composed in 195…
Piano Sonatas
Chris Newman is a contemporary composer, painter, author and performance artist living in Berlin. This is the first recording of Newman’s Piano Sonatas, a large and important aspect to his work. The renowned British piano virtuoso and composer Michael Finnissy performs the four sonatas here. Newman and Finnissy have been collaborators for over a quarter century, ensuring definitive performances. Composer supervised recordings. Liner notes by the composer and Michael Finnissy. From 1976-79, C…
Cage Performs Cage
Empty Words (1973-74) with Music for Piano (1952-56). John Cage, voice. Yvar Mikhashoff, piano. One7 (1991) for any way of producing sounds. John cage, voice. Mode celebrates its 200th release with a special installment in its John cage Edition - works performed by John cage himself, released for the first time. These recordings were made in Buffalo, New York in April 1991. cage and Mode Records were in Buffalo to work on the premiere of his Europera 5, which he wrote for Yvar Mikhashoff, a long…
Silenced Voices
The Barton Workshop & others. Frank Denyer & James Fulkerson, music directors. 'Woman, Viola and Crow' (2004) with Elisabeth Smalt, muted viola, voice, percussion sounds. 'Two Beacons' (2005) with Harma Everts, voice; Boris Visser, muted violin; Rozemarie Heggen, muted double-bass; Neil Sorrell, sarangi; Tobias Liebezeit & Juan Martinez Cortès, percussion; Jos Zwaanenburg, Melkorta Olafsdottir, Ayano Akubo, flutes; Joeri de Vente, horn; Yula Andrews, Ella Dangerfield, Catherine Guy, Lucinda Guy,…
Kraanerg
Kraanerg (1968) for 23 instruments and 4-channel tape. Callithumpian Consort. Stephen Drury, conductor. First recording with restored analog tape. Kraanerg is one of Xenakis' most popular - and infamous - works. A visceral and highly charged score for woodwinds, brass, and strings along with quadrophonic tape. The title, Kraanerg, is a composite of two Greek words: 'kraan', meaning to perfect, to accomplish; and erg, signifying energy. Commissioned for the gala opening of the National Arts Centr…
The Artistry of Margaret Leng Tan
10 years in the making, 2 films by Evans Chan trace the artist's life, career and pianism. Strumming the strings of a grand piano like a harp and performing Beethoven on toy piano are among the surprising scenes in Evans Chan's documentary, Sorceress of the New Piano (2004), which celebrates the trans-cultural career of Singapore-born, New York-based pianist Margaret Leng Tan, hailed by The New Yorker as 'the diva of avant-garde pianism.' Featured performers and critics include Joan LaBarbara, E…
The Number Pieces 5 - Two2
Laurel Karlik Sheehan gave the Canadian premiere of Two2 with Jack Behrens in 1990. Rob Haskins is a respected John Cage expert and scholar. Together they bring an authority and expertise to this performance of Two2. In most of the Number Pieces, all the performers have some freedom through Cage’s use of time brackets, flexible measures that show a range of possible starting and ending times. The time bracket system of notation used in these works allows a certain amount of flexibility in the p…
Number Pieces 4
The first recording of John Cage’s large scale composition for 3 recorder players. The Trio Dolce wrote Cage for permission to perform Solo with Obbligato Accompaniment on three alto recorders, one octave higher than the prescribed range. In a letter from March 1987 Cage replied: “Of course you may use the 3 alto recorders. I am glad that you are playing that piece.” They performed it on July 1988 with Cage in attendance. Cage’s enthusiastic reaction to this performance encouraged Trio Dolce t…
Melody, Ergodicity and Indeterminacy
Barton Workshop. James Fulkerson & Frank Denyer, directors. First Recordings. "James Tenney (1934-2006) was probably the first composer to develop an aesthetic for computer music, realizing that electronic music almost forced the composer to accept noise as music and to abandon the idea of absolute control over a composition. He came to accept Cage's passion for randomness, but from a different angle: computer music can be "unpredictable" (rather than "random"). This CD looks at how Tenney…
Whispers Out Of Time
Roger Reynolds’ (b.1939) music is a bit of a paradox: intimate in detail, while on a broader scale it is epic. It fits well with the music of his friends: Toru Takemitsu and Iannis Xenakis. The three works on this disc were composed over a four-year period (1987-1990). All are first recordings, and the first complete disc of Reynolds’ orchestral music. Symphony[Myths], dedicated to Takemitsu, is for large orchestra: woodwinds in fours, piano, harp and an extended percussion section. It is see…
Works with Guitar
Like his near contemporary Franco Donatoni, Aldo Clementi (b.1925) is an Italian composer who has had a very fruitful association with that most Italian of instruments, the guitar. Both Clementi and Donatoni shared similar paths in their compositional development: the early influences of major early 20th-century composers through the adoption and later rejection of serialism and the Darmstadt courses they both attended, culminating in their very individual mature styles. Clementi's recent pieces…
Complete Short Works for Prepared Piano
The complete short prepared piano works collected on 2-CDs. John Cage's works for prepared piano expose his earliest experimentations in finding new and exotic sounds.Brief and attractive, they are among his most accessible work. This release marks the first time all of his short works for prepared piano have been made available in one set. All the prepared piano works are included aside from the magnum opus, Sonatas and Interludes. Pianist Philipp Vandr´e has recorded Sonatas and Interludes for…
Tracer - Chamber Works 1952-1999
Surround sound DVD. Earle Brown first encountered the work of Alexander Calder in 1948, whose mobile sculptures Brown saw as a visual embodiment of the variable (impermanent) aesthetic that he was striving to create. This Calder aesthetic stayed with Brown throughout his several stylistic shifts. Whether he was writing twelve-tone serial music (Music for Violin, Cello, and Piano), conceptual graphic scores (Folio and Four Systems), composed material open form scores (String Quartet, New Piece an…
Ever Present
Awesome collection of new, post-2000 works by Alvin Lucier. It's a been a long time since "I Am Sitting In A Room" for sure, but the dude clearly understands how to fill a room with sound as well as most anyone alive. "Alvin Lucier's (b. 1931) works on this CD, for solos and trios, continue to explore his unique sound world, exploration of microtones, and use of unusual instrumentation. 'Piper' is probably one of the few avant-garde pieces composed for the bagpipe. The piper is asked to walk slo…
The Orchestral Works 2
"The first recording of his 32-minute grand cantata 'La Nascita del Verb.' Steeped in chromaticism, with hints of Scriabin and a sea of percussion, 'Nascita' boasts a vast double fugue (one of the most imposing in the history of music) and a forty-seven voice canon in twelve keys. This work, 'truly written in blood,' left Scelsi 'in a deplorable state, afterwards he stopped composing for several years. One of Giacinto Scelsi's infamous pieces are the 'Quattro Pezzi (su una nota sola).' Ear piece…
Flying White
'String Quartet No. 2' mind rock (2000) for Richard Long. 'String Quartet No. 4' flying white (2003) for Brice Marden. Binaural recording. 'String Quartet No. 5' poids de l'ombre (2004) for Stéphane Brunner. 'String Quartet No. 3' mond see (2001) for Inge Dick. Binaural recording. Klangforum Wien String Quartet: Annette Bik and Sophie Schaffleitner, violins. Dimitrios Polisoidis, viola. Andreas Lindenbaum, violoncello. 'For his third CD on Mode, composer, trombonist, improvisor Roland Dahinden e…
Sketch of Now
Tim Hodgkinson co-founded the politically and musically radical free-jazz/progressive rock group Henry Cow in 1968, which also featured guitarist Fred Frith. He regards his membership in this group, with the opportunity to work closely and collectively with other instrumentalists in developing new sound worlds, as the foundation of his musical education. In addition to composing, Hodgkinson continues to perform as an improviser (clarinets, saxes and keyboards) and considers the practice of impro…
One11 And 103
A performance for camera person and light, One11 is a film without subject. There is light but no persons, no things, no ideas about repetition and variation? Chance operations where used with respect to the shots, in black and white. The light environment was designed and programmed by John Cage and Andrew Culver, as was the editing of the film.The orchestral work 103 musically accompanies One11. Like the film, 103 is 90-minutes long, divided into seventeen parts - its density varies from solos…
Advance of the Fungi
Advance of the Fungi - (chamber works 1960-66) - Time on Time in Miracles for soprano, 2 horns, 2 trombones, piano, cello & percussion; Mod 3 for flute, percussion & contrabass; Holy Ghost Vacuum or America Faints for electric organ; Advance of the Fungi for male choir, 3 clarinets, 3 trombones, 2 horns, & 1 percussion; Two Worlds for soprano, flute, oboe, piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello & contrabass; Bestiary 1: Eingang for soprano, piano & 5 percussionists.
Ascension to Purgatory
This is Pape's third monographic CD with Mode Records. Whereas his last Mode CD ("Electro-acoustic Chamber Works", released in 1998) presented his ground breaking works of 1993-1996, this new CD presents a selection of his more recent pieces composed from 1998 to 2004. While Pape continues his fascination with composing with chaotic sound in Le Fleuve du Désir IV and Weaveworld Prologue, it is his new approach to composing with packets of granular time that predominates on this CD. In La Na…