Composition / All styles

Perhaps best known for his vast catalogue of vocal music－operas, song cycles, and choral works－Ned Rorem (b. 1923) also has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos, and an impressive array of other orchestral and chamber works. He received the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for the orchestral suite Air Music. This collection features three of his orchestral works, String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles. String Symphony dates from 1985 and was completed in the space of just eight weeks. Mr. Ro…

The premieres of John Knowles Paine's two symphonies－the First in 1876, the Second in 1880－may be said to mark the effective beginning of the American symphonic tradition. American composer George W. Chadwick, who had been a young man in Boston in the 1870s, recalled that the Paine symphonies were "a stimulus and an inspiration to more than one ambitious musician of that time." Paine (1839-1906) studied with a German immigrant musician in Portland, Maine, then went to Berlin for several years. U…

William Schuman was born in 1910 in New York. His earliest musical interests were at first confined to current popular music. In 1930, after hearing his first concert of symphonic music－Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic in a program of music by Wagner, Kodaly, and Robert Schumann－he redirected his life. Schuman later graduated from Columbia University and studied privately with Roy Harris. Symphony No. 7 premiered on October 21, 1960, under the direction of Charles Munch, who succeeded Kou…

While a student at the Horace Mann School, Elliott Carter came to know Charles Ives. Carter continued his education at Harvard and then studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Ives and Boulanger were formative influences: Carter's music draws on American experimentalism (Ives, Cowell, Crawford, Nancarrow, Varèse) and European modernism (Debussy, Stravinsky, the Viennese). Ever since he reached his stylistic maturity with the String Quartet No. 1 of 1951, Carter has continued to pursue an original…

Pianist Peter Serkin is renowned for his performances and recordings of contemporary music. He has worked closely with composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Toru Takemitsu, Luciano Berio, and Peter Lieberson; he also was a founding member of the chamber group Tashi.  Igor Stravinsky's 1925 Serenade en La was originally composed to suit phonograph players, with each movement designed to fit the three-minute capacity of each of four ten-inch 78rpm sides. The title, Stravinsky explained, did not mea…

George Rochberg seems an unlikely revolutionary, yet it was he, more than anyone else, who dealt the crushing blow to serialist orthodoxy. A student of Gian Carlo Menotti at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Rochberg began as a modern mainstream composer. He later became involved with serialism, but with Contra mortem et tempus (1965), written after the death of his son, Rochberg hesitatingly but irrevocably re-embraced not only tonality but the whole universe of emotional states commonly as…

Perhaps from the habit of our nineteenth-century parlor-music tradition, perhaps from the frustration of trying to get orchestral works performed, American composers seem to have remained more active in the genre of the chamber sonata than their European counterparts. In America, the genre has received particular attention from composers of a classical or neoclassical bent, as the works on this recording, varied as they are in style and technique, bear out. In 1945, when he wrote the Sonatina, W…

This recording contains four works for violin by four disparate American composers with unique conceptions of the instrument and its possibilities, technical and expressive. Elliott Carter’'s Riconoscenza is a short work for unaccompanied violin imbued with a craggy, rough-hewn grandeur and arching melodic lines characteristic of his mature music. Fantasy for Violin and Piano by Ralph Shapey (b. 1921) typifies the unusual blend of astringency and lyricism of his dense, passionate and deeply rewa…

The music of Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) was a rarity in the United States. Much admired for its artistry, it was yet so individual and its Symbolist aesthetic so unusual that Loeffler acquired a reputation that set him apart from other American composers of his generation. Loeffler came to America at the age of twenty. Behind him he had a cosmopolitan European background: He was born in France and had lived there and in Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Switzerland. As a composer Loeffler w…

John Harbison's music draws together gestures and ideas from musical worlds that reflect such favorite composers as Robert Schumann and Heinrich Schutz, the songs of George Gershwin, and the hieratic qualities of Igor Stravinsky. His work has always been expressive, though never with a heart-on-sleeve emoting of personal angst, a mode that simply does not interest him. Recently Harbison has shown an interest in recapturing such historical genres as the formal set of variations (as in his Variati…

The vocal music on this recording documents three generations of American music, each characterized by its own ideals yet shaped by its relationship to the past. Heard together on one disc, this music provides a glimpse of the rapid and often radical aesthetic upheavals that American music has undergone during the twentieth century. The three settings by Arthur Shepherd (1880-1958) - Golden Stockings,” “To a Trout,” and “Virgil - were composed shortly before World War II and exhibit a sensitive …

The Piano Concerto was Peter Lieberson's first orchestral work and was, from the outset, conceived with Peter Serkin in mind as the soloist. He wrote it after a long period of immersion in the study of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Throughout what Lieberson regards as the "journey" of the Piano Concerto, the character of each movement changes dramatically, though the very tune that unfolds at the opening of the work returns in full just before the end. Each of the three movements reflects in a mus…

This is the premiere recording of Samuel Barber's Antony & Cleopatra, written for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966. Along with Vanessa, it is one of the peaks of Barber's output and one of the great American operas. Though it is rarely staged, this recording allows us to enjoy the fruits of Barber's accomplishment: the glamour of much of the vocal writing, particularly for Cleopatra; the richness, color, variety and imagination of the orchestration; the s…

Vincent Persichetti's choral music plays an important part role in his output. In many ways his Mass is an orthodox a cappella Mass, its Renaissance heritage reflected in its use of a Gregorian chant as the unifying theme, and in its reliance on imitative counterpoint as its chief developmental technique. His Winter Cantata, based on a collection of haiku, is scored for women's chorus, flute, and marimba. Without any overt musical references, the work is Japanese in spirit, largely as a result o…

The Third Essay was Samuel Barber’'s last completed work and its drama and lyricism are entirely characteristic of the neo-Romantic style he composed in for his entire life, a style which won him a large and faithful audience. In his avowed concern for writing music that communicates with the listening public, John Corigliano could be seen as an inheritor of Barber’'s mantle. The Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra is a large-scale work that demonstrates his eclectic style at its finest. Corigli…

Comet-like radiance, conviction, fervent intensity, penetrating thought on many levels of seriousness and humor, combined with breathtaking adventurousness and originality, marked the inner and outer life of Stefan Wolpe, as they do his compositions.”— -- Elliott Carter Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972) is an acknowledged master of modern music whose oeuvre has had a lasting influence on both classical and jazz musicians. Though receptive to prevailing musical trends, Wolpe was an individualist who forg…

Music of the Federal Era is an excellent overview of late 18th and early 19th century compositions by Benjamin Carr, Oliver Shaw, Raynor Taylor and others, performed on period instruments. The variety of styles represented on this disc reflects two kinds of music that existed quite separately: one centered in the cities, essentially European in origin, and the other in villages and the countryside. For while America found itself politically independent at the end of the Revolutionary War, cultur…

Of the numerous settings of Walt Whitman’s poetry, and this poem in particular, Sessions's is generally agreed to be one of the very finest and most sensitive. His mature style - a highly personal, instantly recognizable mix of severity and control with passion and serenity - projects the poetry now in simple chordal declamation, now in the long, high-arched melodies of which he is the master, conveying wonderfully the feel and variety of Whitman’'s lines. Over the years, Sessions's elegy has ta…

The generation of American composers who came of age in the 1920s are now generally acknowledged as seminal figures in the creation of a truly indigenous American art music. Quartet Romantic makes available for the first time on CD several important chamber works by four of these figures - Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Wallingford Riegger, and John Becker - as well as an early work by Cowell's most famous pupil, Lou Harrison.

This compendium of American piano music of the last half of the nineteenth-century is a potpourri of popular salon pieces and works of more serious aspirations. Together they conjure a characteristic portrait of the society for which they were composed, evoking images of frontier primitivism, brownstone-ballroom elegance, urban sophistication, as well as a more academically inclined formalism looking back to European models. Scintillating pianism by Ivan Davis and absolutely fascinating notes on…

Clearly influenced by Varese's concept of "pure sound," the four works on From Behind the Unreasoning Mask privilege the exploration of sound as a means of musical expression. In the 1970s, the integration of new vocal and instrumental techniques and, sometimes, electronic sound sources into the composer's vocabulary broadened the tonal, textural--and, consequently--expressive palette immeasurably. Roger Reynolds's (b. 1934) From Behind the Unreasoning Mask (1975) presents an interplay between a…

Making its first appearance on CD, The Haymakers is an integral and indispensable part of the mosaic of the emerging American musical culture of the nineteenth century. It is a secular dramatic cantata on an American subject and was written in 1857, when large-scale American works were not yet supposed to have developed. It is the best-wrought and was the most successful of the five penned by George F. Root (1820-1895), remembered primarily for rousing Civil War songs like "The Battle Hymn of Fr…

If diversity and independence are definitive American traits, it would be hard to find four roughly contemporaneous native composers more unmistakably American. Markedly different in personality, each going his own stubbornly separate way, each spoke his uniquely individual dialect. They were born in successive decades (the last four of the nineteenth century) in different regions, and they were even more diverse in their musical training, affinities, and styles, yet they managed to create music…

Choral music has always held and continues to hold a prominent position in American musical life. The three works presented here take their place in a tradition that stretches back to the Puritan Fathers. The title composition, Americana, is one of the most popular works of Randall Thompson, America's finest and most-performed composer of choral music. In a prefatory note in the score the composer commented: The [five] different parts of the work are satirical and, at moments, mirth-provoking, …

A welcome appearance on disc of some of the finest American music for wind ensemble from the 1950s to the 1970s that demonstrates the evolution of the wind band as a vehicle for “serious” composition. The five compositions represent a wide cross-section of styles and composers. Pageant is a prime example of Vincent Persichetti’s lasting contribution to the genre--a warm, expressive piece written in a rich harmonic idiom. Hale Smith’s Expansions is cut from a decidedly darker cloth, a dark drama …

Octavian Nemescu's music doesn't perform - it initiates. This Metaphon collection reveals Romania's spectral mystic at his most profoundly timeless, where bees' wings and synthesizer drones become pathways to the inaudible."

Before spectral music had a name, Romanian polymath Corneliu Cezar was crafting electro-acoustic revelations. Ziua fără sfârșit collects his 1967-75 recordings - radical explorations of natural resonance that predate Western spectralism by a decade.

*300 coipes limited edition* PMP releases Trillium X, Anthony Braxton's sixth opera, to mark his 80th birthday. Composer, multi-instrumentalist, experimentalist and visionary Anthony Braxton is considered one of the most important musicians, educators and creative thinkers of the last fifty years Limited edition deluxe box set of 8 CDs includes a live recording of the world premiere in Prague, a studio recording made at the famous Darmstadt summer courses, 6 hours of exclusive audiovisual materi…

2009 release ** "Denissow avoids postmodern clutter by putting critical distance between himself and the music - this is a fantasy. Jürg Henneberger and Hedwig Fassbender avoid the hard sell, keeping the make-believe sound world allusive and inscrutable. And they bring comparable qualities to one of the best Folk Song cycles around - a work whose charms have, arguably, been dinted by overfamiliarity but that has now been calmly reassessed."

Klaus Lang's compositional approach has always been deeply rooted in the music of old Renaissance masters. Never shy of the that fact, he constantly explores the connections between old and new (old to new).This unique release presents Klaus' fascination with the music of Johannes Ockeghem and it contains harmonium (Klaus' trademark instrument) transcriptions of his sacred and secular songs.

Very rare private CD re-issue of Franca Sacchi's privately released artist's records from the mid 70's "Ho sempre desiderato..." and (one piece from) "Essere". "In the early 70's Franca Sacchi approached feminism thanks to the group Rivolta femminile and began a period of reflection that led her to repudiate formal research and to dedicate herself solely to improvisation as a method to manifest her deepest and most universal authenticity. She then shifted her attention from the organization of s…

*150 copies limited edition* A beautiful edition of only 150 glass mastered CDs in a clear poly sleeve with hand stamped cover and a 22 page full color booklet featuring photos, drawings, and text by Laura Steenberge, with additional text by Michael Winter, Rebecca Lane, and Catherine Lamb.   "In medieval chant, music seems to have come from elsewhere.  It is the angels that are singing, they said, like gourds  hung up for purple martins. By the time notation started coming  around, hundreds of …

Apartment House presents seven works from John Cage's early period, before he began his systematic exploration of chance procedures. This repertoire captures a transitional moment when Cage had moved beyond traditional methods but before he devised new formal systems—a period when, as pianist Kerry Yong notes, he was "forced to be guided by their instincts and intuition" producing "extraordinary music." The program balances what Yong calls "simply gorgeous / gorgeously simple pieces like 'Dream'…

A 64-minute piano solo composed in 2021, performed by Jack Yarbrough. "'Mine but for its sublimation' is about resonance, register, and touch. It is about where we lead ourselves when we trust ourselves. It is experiencing trust as a chain of clearings, a sequence of becomings, openings, centerings. It is about letting go; othering; finding presence through evaporation. Obliteration." - Timothy McCormack

Kory Reeder composed Homestead (2024)—a nearly hour-long string quartet in four movements with an interlude—during his residency as Artist in Residence at Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice, Nebraska in 2023. As he explains: "As a fifth-generation Nebraskan, growing up on the native lands of the Chatiks si chatiks people (Pawnee), this project is a part of my process of learning, listening, and developing a relationship with the land and its stewards in my home state: a beautiful pla…

A 45-minute piece from 2024 composed by Ferdinand Schwarz in collaboration with AREPO ensemble.

A 50 minute solo for viola d'amore played by Marco Fusi. The piece was composed in 2022-2023, and has six movements.

*300 copies limited edition* Patience is the debut full-length album by Sante Fe-based artist Theodore Cale Schafer. Alternately murky and narcoleptic and bristling with grit and light, this collection of eight pieces is a delicate play of contrasts. Impressionistic settings unfurl with an unhurried gait, opening with the dream-like disorientation of "Gold Chain" in which a degraded location recording gives way to a soft web of treated piano motifs. Schafer's compositions are sumptuous yet unfus…

2025 stock The sound of silence: Estonian-born Arvo Pärt is considered the contemporary composer par excellence, a cult figure of the avant-garde, a man who redefined modernism with music of hypnotic tension and fascinating spirituality. The performers of the orchestral and choral music on this release are top-quality artists and ensembles from Pärt’s native Estonia, notably the conductors Paavo Järvi and Tõnu Kaljuste, who present uniquely authentic readings.

*300 copies limited edition* Students of Decay presents "Kaivajaiset" by Finnish composer Niko-Matti Ahti. Best known for his work alongside his partner Marja as Ahti & Ahti, Niko-Matti has been an active participant in the Finnish underground since the late 1990s. "Kaivajaiset" is his first solo recording and was originally conceived of as an installation. Part horspiel, part musique concrete, it is a piece of music that draws comparisons to the work of pioneering avant-garde composers such as …