Composition / All styles

A.G unveils Made Of Colors, a vibrant and captivating new album. This collection of tracks invites listeners on a journey through rich sonic landscapes, blending evocative melodies with dynamic production that showcases A.G’s unique artistic vision. Made Of Colors explores themes of emotion, identity, and transformation through a kaleidoscope of sounds—each song painted with intricate textures and thoughtful lyrics. The album highlights A.G’s skillful musicianship and creative depth, offering a …

Contemporary composer and pianist A.G. returns with Six Piano Pieces, a captivating collection of minimalist piano compositions released on the esteemed Anika label. This album invites listeners into a serene and introspective world, where every note is carefully crafted to evoke emotion and thought. Six Piano Pieces showcases A.G.’s masterful ability to blend simplicity with depth, delivering subtle yet profound musical narratives. Each track unfolds gently, drawing the audience into a meditati…

2014 release ** "The structure of this 2-disc set is durationally symmetrical, four pieces lasting (more or less) 8, 60, 60 and 8 minutes. I've no idea how representative this sample is of Schneider's work (I think it's my first experience of it) but there seems to be at least something of a common thread int he way he uses quasi-repetition of forms (not in a minimalist sense) that, over time, result in something larger than the individual elements. "Zeitgehöft" (the title of a collection of poe…

2016 release ** When I was small, my grandparents had an old upright piano in the living room of their terraced house. I never learned how to play the piano ‘properly’, but I remember spending hours sat at that instrument, stomping on the extreme upper and lower notes, always with the sustain pedal held down, marvelling at the sounds it produced. The “solo” disc of Johan Lindvall’s double album “solo/ensemble” reminds me very much of being at that piano, though the composer’s 24 short, sparse pr…

2017 release ** Reading (Story of) O brings together (Story of) O a graphic and semantic reworking of the original story (English and French words coexisting on the page) accompanied by two fictional texts (Story of) A and (Story of) E, and Reading O, a few simple strategies and choices for reading—alone or with others, in private or to an audience, so that you may find your way through it as through you own story. This is the first collective reading in English and French with 9 readers, it la…

2013 release ** From the early 2000s, Stefan Thut began a series of scores named according to the number of performers, somewhat like Cage's later works. Ranging from one performer to seven, including the more indeterminate "some" and "many," each score is very open, completely undefined, with a few written indications (limited mainly to volume restrictions), plus a kind of guiding thread to follow (composed of letters, lines, etc.) during the performance, without any indication of duration, for…

2013 release **"A split disc with five compositions by Stiegler and two by Ablinger, each performed by some combination of violin (Sabine Akiko Ahrendt), cello (Jan-Filip Tupa) and clarinet (Diego Montes). I think I'd only heard Stiegler's work before in conjunction with Hannes Seidl on their early Wandelweiser release, "das wetter in offenbach". Here, he evinces a rather playful approach, especially in the two "Treibut" (flotsam) pieces, 1/2 (2011) and II (2009); playful but with a nicely bitte…

2015 release ** "Two works, Frey's third string quartet (2010-2014) and a piece for string quartet and two percussionists (2004-2006), with Quatuor Bozzini on each, assisted by Lee Ferguson and Christian Smith on the latter. I get the impression that if you half-listened to the string quartet, you might get the impression of stasis and self-similarity though nothing could be further from the truth. In his notes, Frey compares it to "the silence of a square, a room, a wall or a landscape" and tha…

2013 release ** "Lost In Dreams comprises six pieces - Traumverloren I Für Klavier (2010), unfurling for over 30 minutes, its duration suited to Houben's clarifying this soft insistence embedded within mere repetition; and five dedicatory pieces of much shorter duration, bearing the titles in memoriam - Mussorgsky, Enescu, Schumann, Liszt and Messiaen. These brief epitaths privilege the presence of silence as much as any of Houben's works, with a surprisingly spry turn in the Enescu piece, sound…

2015 release **

2015 release ** This really is a special one. Solo voice carries so many connotations, of speech, of song, of chant, of prayer. It’s the most directly human, personal, unmediated instrument of all. It’s the way we speak to each other, comfort each other, entertain ourselves, reassure ourselves, talk to our gods. There are elements of all on this CD; remarkably so, because on first listen at least all seven pieces inhabit similarly restrained, private and reticent soundworlds. There is a general …

2017 release **  "The duo of Beat Keller and Philipp Bowee on electric guitars perform 6 subtle compositions from Turkish-born sound artists and composer Cem Guney's, including 'a bas relief of a talisman' dedicated to Charles Ives and 'soft kill incubator' dedicated to Sylvia Alexandra Schimag."

2015 release ** "Pieces  written for a sextet of flute, clarinet, percussion (quiet, white-noisy/rattley-type things), violin, viola and cello. They each follow a similar pattern, presenting a solitary idea – a chord, an instrumental texture – that alternates with short silences and gradually evolves with each return. The first, two and three, is almost like breathing. The sounds themselves are beautifully and carefully devised, particularly the gently descending peals in mulberry grove, but it …

2016 release ** "In the early days of Wandelweiser records, a disc of music by the forgotten composer Herman Van San extended the label’s scope and helped to cement its aesthetic.  He was composing long before there was a Wandelweiser group or label, but his outsider static and innovative music was a perfect fit.  This disc of music by the all but unknown Mikheil Shugliashvili achieves a similar purpose. Born in 1941, the composer died in 1996, the year of the label’s first release, but his radi…

2016 release ** "This release by Edition Wandelweiser Records collects recent compositions by Katharina Weber, Jack Callahan, Alex Goretzki, and Alfred Zimmerlin, performed by Christian Buck on guitar and Christian Wolfarth on percussion. It opens with Callahan’s ‘New Piece’, beginning with quiet feedback and low rumble before moving on to evenly spaced chords, cymbals, and soft beats. There’s an ambiguity or uncertainty to these sounds, or to my hearing of them, in terms of their harmony and ti…

2013 releae ** "Three works for solo piano in a kind of homage to Cage's "4'33"", insofar as the room in which the recordings took place is accorded coequal prominence, at least as the stated intention of Lee. So one hears various rustles, coughs and whatnot while the beginning of the last track, "Piano Solo No. 5" (2011) sounds as though recorded in close proximity to a number of aging fluorescent bulbs. More to the point, the piano sound is noticeably different in the three spaces. The music i…

2013 release ** "11 Micro-Exercises were invented by Christian Wolff in response to a commission from the Miniaturist Ensemble. For Wandelweiser Editions, other miniaturists perform these eleven pieces (plus two bonus pieces): Beat Keller and Reza Khot. Keller and Khot are two electric guitarists who pierce the ivory (sometimes tear it) and respect the principle of a musical art free from preconceptions. Nine seconds, twenty-two, one minute and thirteen, or eleven minutes and forty-seven… The le…

2014 release ** "Peter Streiff’s music moves in historical webs, encompassing the connected worlds of allusion and individuality in a language that is at once direct and cryptic. This new disc of his piano music, performed by fellow composer Urs Peter Schneider, is a microcosm of Streiff’s creative trajectory. For ease of comprehension, I will use English versions of composition titles in this review. “Of Magic” (1970), the earliest material represented here, has a fair amount in common with the…

2013 release ** "Sometimes, music reaches my desk which I genuinely feel is beyond my ken to write about--I simply don't have the necessary tools. This wonderful disc, in large part, is one such so I'll pretty much stick to just giving my impressions and make no real attempt to put the music into context. I do feel confident in saying that, though I haven't heard everything released from Wandelweiser, the music herein will pretty definitely not coincide with your impression of the label, and I …

2015 release ** "Margriet Hoenderdos, a student of influential Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw, was still honing her own distinctive voice at the time of her premature death in 2010. The precariousness of simply existing is effectively evoked in a 21 minute woodwind quintet in which she responded to a poem by Hans Faverey, written as he endured his own terminal illness. Sombre and harmonically anxious, this music resembles a physical construction that appears sturdy, yet has an unnerving tendency to…

2015 release ** "Eleven songs for voice and lute by the Swiss singer and composer Marianne Schuppe. The instrumentation taps a deep historical channel, back to Dowland and beyond. But Schuppe doesn’t pluck her lute. Instead she uses e-bows to turn a melodic accompanying instrument into an environment, an ancient combination updated to reflect a contemporary preference for objects over stories. The songs are simple melodies, sometimes folklike (ballads and laments more than dances), but with word…

**Comes in glossy gatefold sleeve with 20-page booklet ** Features 6 works by the influential Italian avant-gardist of the 20th century, dating from 1961-1990. Pranam I (for voice, 12 instruments and tape, 1972); Anagamin. Celui qui choisit de revenir ou pas (for 12 strings, 1965); Quattro pezzi su una nota sola (for chamber orchestra, 1959); Quartetto n. 4, (1964); Okanagon (Tam Tam and double bass, 1968); Quartetto n. 2 (1961). "For Giacinto Scelsi, music was above all a manifestation of the e…

The first CD release of works by Franco Evangelisti (1926-1980), the founder of Nuova Consonanza (infamous early '60s Italian avant garde ensemble that included Mario Bertoncini, Roland Kayn, Ennio Morricone, Frederic Rzewski and others). This two disc retrospective features studio audio-footage and lab-experiments, featuring performers Aloys Kontarsky, David Tudor, Eberhard Blüm and the LaSalle Quartet. Spanning the last 40 years, virtually all forms of post-1950 invention are represented here …

Led by pianist Franco Evangelisti, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza performed as a collective from 65 -71. The focus was to expand both the sonic capabilities of their instruments, but also the sensitivity of each performer within the context of the improvisation. The result(s) remain some of the purist and elevated abstract explorations put to tape retaining both warmth and intelligence. Piano, percussion, double bass, trombone, cello, trumpet, etc are the tools for unparalleled types…

Live electronic compositions from 1993-2005 by composer Agostino Di Scipio, using acoustic instruments and digital sound processing to create unusual and previously unheard sound worlds.

An expanded version of the previous rz LP by Jani Christou. All works by Christou, the late, legendary "freely-atonal" Greek composer. Features: "Enantiodromia" (1965-68, for orchestra); "Praxis" (1966-69, for string orchestra and piano), "Epicycle" (1968, for instruments, actors and voices); "Anaparastasis III" (1968-69, for soloist, ensemble and continuum [tapes]); "Mysterion" (1965-66, for narrator, actors, 3 choirs, orchestra and tapes)"Jani Christou tried to use and incorporate philosophica…

German composer Josef Anton Riedl doesn’t have many releases to show for nigh on six decades of activity. Of his small handful of albums, all long out of print, the best known is a 1972 Wergo LP. The second half of the noughties saw a minor swell of interest in Riedl’s work – the Wergo album was given the Creel Pone CD-R bootleg treatment in 2005, and one of his compositions was included on the fifth volume of Sub Rosa’s Anthology Of Noise And Electronic Music series – but for the most part he r…

Recordings from the Elektronic Studio at the TU Berlin, the Studio of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, and at Patrick Kosk's own studio

An outstanding album, Voice, Books and Fire is the result of Jakob Ullmann reflections about the relationships between music and language: language as sound and language as text, the numerous relationships between texts of different cultural and religious traditions, between the work of the human spirit in the present and in the past and the questions arising from the problem of understanding these different traditions, languages and texts and representing them in a present, which has lost knowl…

Edition RZ presents John McGuire's Works For Instruments. Performers: Ensemble Modern -- Julia Rempe (soprano); Pellegrini-Quartett: Antonio Pellegrini, Thomas Hofer (violin); Fabio Marano (viola); Helmut Menzler (violoncello); musikFabrik: Hermann Kretzschmar, Paulo Alvarez, Irmela Roelcke, Eun-Ju Kim, Ulrich Löffler, Jürgen Kruse (piano), Christine Chapman, Jodie Lawson, Charles Putnam, Rohan Richards (horns), Dirk Rothbrust, Carlos Tarcha (percussion). Each of the compositions of post-minimal…

Works from Italian composer Clara Iannotta recorded from 2012 - 2014, including a work for string quartet composed for the DAAD artist-in-Berlin program

Beautiful new Jacob Ullman Organ composition of subtle gradations in sound performed very softly forcing the ear to notice the smallest variations. "Thus, Ullmann creates a quiet music in order to give himself and his listeners the opportunity to hear more, and better. This comes about because our ability to hear is augmented when listening to quiet music. We hear better because we make an effort to hear better. That is why Ullmann likes to locate his sound sources at the periphery, so as not to…

Jakob Ullman's 5th solo work for piano is atypical for a piano performance, using electronic playback and requiring three assistants sustaining a soundscape to realize a concept of "gravity".

Jakob Ullmann has made the orchestral work "steine, feuer, sterne" (stones, fire, stars) based on a modular structure, such that individual sections can be played outside of a complete performance, solo or in predetermined combinations; this album presents one section for solo bassoon titled "Muntzers stern" performed by Dafne Vicente-Sandoval.From the liner notes by Hans-Peter Schulz; Translation by Peter Gebert: Solo II is part of a group of works with the title Buch der Stille 1 ('Book of Sil…

An astonishing CD with the usual RZ deluxe touch by the well-known fluxus related cellist. Michael von Biel (born 30 June 1939 in Hamburg)  a German composer, cellist, and graphic artist. Von Biel studied piano, theory, and composition in Toronto (1956–57), Vienna (1958–60), New York (1960, with Morton Feldman, amongst others), London (1960, with Cornelius Cardew), and Cologne (with Karlheinz Stockhausen). From 1961 to 1963 he attended the Darmstadt Vacation Courses for New Music. In 1964 he rec…

A portrait of Christian Wolff, documenting the composer's early activity through recordings made close to the time of their composition from artists including Cornelius Cardew, Frederic Rzewski, David Tudor

Restocked, reduced price: beautifully prepared overview of Gottfried Michael Koenig's work (including early 60s WDR electronic classics), produced in conjunction by the Instituut of Sonologie and NEAR/Donemus w/ Edition RZ. During the early '60s, Koenig began writing a program -- named simply 'Project 1,' or PR1 -- designed to compose and generate music via the computer; when in 1964 he accepted the position of creative director with the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, Holland, he took the so…

Re-release of ed. RZ LP Luigi Nono plus three remarkable recordings. All works by Luigi Nono: ("A Carlo Scarpa" for large orchestra), ("A Pierre" for contrabass flute, contrabass clarinet and live electronics), ("Guia Al Gelidi Mostri" for electronically treated winds, voices and strings). Plus an additional CD of compositions not on the original LP: "Caminantes" and "No hay caminos, hay que caminar." Regarding Nono's concept of "new listenings": "This no longer means revolutionizing the e…

From the liner notes by Jakob Ullmann (translated by Peter Gebert and Molly McDolan): "It was during a break in the inaugural meeting of the East German section of the IGNM (International Society for Contemporary Music) in March of 1990 when Reinhard Oehlschlägel, the long-standing music editor of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, suggested taking advantage of the fact that John Cage was to attend the summer courses in Darmstadt as a special guest by inviting John Cage to East Berlin. . . . Making Gia…

4CD Box edition. Ranked #4 in the the Wire's Rewind 2012 best-of list. Three CD box collection with a 16-page booklet. "Experimental German composer Jakob Ullmann creates quiet music in order to give himself and his listeners the opportunity to hear more, and better. This comes about because our ability to hear is augmented when listening to quiet music. We hear better because we make an effort to hear better. That is why Ullmann likes to locate his sound-sources at the periphery, so as not to m…