The Works for Percussion 3
John Cage’s vision of the future of music was first shaped by an intense creative period from 1935-1942, when he wrote many of the seminal works of percussion chamber music featured here. When he composed these works, the young Cage was basically the same age as the members of Third Coast Percussion. This release includes all three of the groundbreaking Constructions. First Construction (in Metal) utilizes dozens of metal instruments which are beaten, scraped and shaken, creating an other w…
Ghosts
This CD collects four chamber works in Chris Newman’s idiosyncratic, quirky style, performed by one of Berlin’s leading new music ensembles. Newman appears a vocal soloist in the work Cologne. The texts are derived from a travel brochure about the city of Cologne which was filled with translation mistakes to a hilarious extent. For Ghost Symphony, Newman writes: “the majority of the piece consists of my own five chords to which I applied the rhythmic values of the first movement of Beethoven’s…
Panorama of American Piano Music
* Set consists of Foldover cover with box containing 4 black cardboard-jacketed CDs and a 27-page booklet * Panorama of American Piano Music is a comprehensive survey of 20th century piano works, beginning with Ives’ “The Alcotts” movement from the Concord Sonata (1911) through 1991. Every decade is represented with works from between those years. Pianist Yvar Mikhashoff (1941–93) was a master at presenting marathon concerts on a single theme. The Panorama was one of them, exploring the remark…
Afterglow
** 2021 Stock ** Keeril Makan composes without assumed expectations of an instrument’s sound or a performer’s capabilities, but by exploring the possible, by discovering the beautiful in the unexpected and following where that beauty leads. Makan’s relationship to the world of sounds has its connection to the work of Edgard Varèse and John Cage and by a broad American experimental tradition, with touchstones in the work of some of the European modernists. Afterglow is the outcome of hours spent…
Zwei Gefühle and Solo Works
Violin and viola players whisper over their instruments. A guitarist waits with the closest attention for the moment to make a gesture we might easily have missed. The tuba player rises to go over to the open piano, there to send sounds echoing into its interior. Two cellists, bowing with heavy pressure down near the tailpiece, produce an urgent rasping. From the timpanist comes the sudden fortissimo that seems to shock the music to a standstill… Renowned German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s mus…
Songs Of Innocence & Experience
** 2021 Stock ** This is the first complete recording of Walter Zimmermann’s string quartets. The 10 Fränkische Tänze, from the project Lokale Musik (Local Music) explore the folk music of Franconia in Germany. They are built on research of old peasant books of dances, some dating back to the early 19th century and the beginning of the notation of folk music. The many dance melodies including waltzes, Schottische [German polka], mazurka, galop etc. are captured, rejected and presented in just in…
The Works for Percussion 2
John Cage’s vision of the future of music was first shaped by an intense creative period from 1935-1942, when he wrote many of the seminal works of percussion chamber music featured here. When he composed these works, the young Cage was basically the same age as the members of Third Coast Percussion. This release includes all three of the groundbreaking Constructions. First Construction (in Metal) utilizes dozens of metal instruments which are beaten, scraped and shaken, creating an other world…
Save Percussion Theatre
Aiyun Huang’s unique recital, “Save Percussion Theater,” is a video-recording of theater music for percussion dedicated to the pioneering work of the Parisian group “Trio Le Cercle,” for whom many of these works written and by whom they have been championed. This recording, in essence a document of the complete percussion works from the French school of theater music, is an ambitious undertaking. Here the camera replaces the eye of an audience member, and the microphone his or her ear, yet wit…
Undersong
** 2021 Stock ** An American who came of age in the late 1980s, Jason Eckardt’s music captures the essences of the genres that led him first to performance (as a guitarist), and then to composition: heavy metal and art rock, jazz, gagaku and p’ansori, the Second Viennese School, American post-serialism, and the new complexity. It evokes the power of inspired, virtuosic improvisation, the incisiveness of classical ensemble playing, and the raw expressivity of ethnic music. The first complete CD o…
Signs, Games and Messages
This is the first complete recording of the 24 Signs, Games and Messages by Hungarian composer György Kurtág. Signs, Games and Messages is a collection of very personal miniatures which Kurtág began writing almost 50 years ago, and which he continues to add to through the present day. Many have been written, dedicated or inspired by a particular person; they pass, sometimes impertinent, sad, serene, cheerful, joyful, thoughtful, or melancholic. This CD is completed by the first recordings of fo…
The Works for Percussion I
John Cage’s percussion works are among his most historically important. After 42 Volumes in Mode’s Cage Edition, Mode is releasing the first volume dedicated to his percussion music. Percussion Group Cincinnati is particularly respected for its knowledge of and experience with the entire range of John Cage’s music, having made tours and festival appearances with him on a number of occasions in Europe and in America, and having had pieces created by Cage especially for the Group. Volume 1 cons…
Bolt From The Blue - Music For Piano & Voices
Howard Skempton’s music strikes a chord with many listeners through its deceptive simplicity, beauty and accessible nature. A student of Cornelius Cardew, Skempton was greatly influenced by Satie, Cage and Feldman. This CD of miniatures intersperses choral works with solo piano pieces. The texts for the choral works come from Mary Webb, Edward Thomas, Emerson, Judith Cramond and Longfellow. Liner notes by the composer, who also supervised the choral recording sessions. Skempton was born in 1…
The Works For Saxophone 3 & 4
Ulrich Krieger completes his A Cage of Saxophones survey of Cage’s works composed for, or which can be played on any instrument or instruments. For this volume, Krieger combines works specifically composed for saxophone with works of no specified instrumentation that are suited for saxophones and winds. Most of these are “indeterminate”works, which require the performer to create the realization based on materials supplied by Cage. In some situations, Krieger used Cage’s compositional “tools” …
Maim (Water)
Maim, a major piece in Chaya Czernowin’s œuvre, is a large scale, 50-minute orchestral tryptch with 5 soloists. The 5 soloists are include regular interpreters of her music: Rico Gubler, tubax (a hybrid of a saxophone & tuba); Peter Veale, oboe & musette; John Mark Harris, piano & harpsichord; Seth Josel, guitars; Mary Oliver, viola. Maim, “water” in Hebrew, is the metaphor which dominates the piece. Elementary forms of water appear throughout Maim, musically translated. Scattered droplets — ar…
Responses To Ives
“Responses to Ives” was conceived in 2003 by pianist Heather O’Donnell as a way to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Charles Ives’s death (May 19, 2004). She approached composers spanning a generation, known to have strong affinities for Ives and asked them to write a “musical reflection” on the presence of Ives in their lives and work. The set was premiered at the MaerzMusik Festival in Berlin in 2004 in the midst of a twelve hour extravaganza of Ives. In the months following repeat perform…
Complete String Quartets
The first complete recording of Xenakis’ string quartets. The first new recording of Xenakis’ first three quartets since 1994. The only available recording of Xenakis’ last quartet, “Ergma”, from 1994. The first commercial release by the JACK Quartet, a young New York/Boston based group that has been garnering high praise for their performances of complex and challenging new music. The members of the quartet met while attending the Eastman School of Music, New York. The quartet has since stud…
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…
Por Gitaro: Suites for Tuned Guitars
First recording of version for just-intonation guitar & just-intonation gamelan Even though Lou Harrison rhapsodized about the “dulcet tones” of the guitar, for much of his career he refused to write for it. The problem was that the guitar’s straight, fixed frets resulted in the tuning system known as equal temperament, while Harrison preferred the crystalline purity of harmony found in the types of tuning known as just intonation. In the 1970s, Harrison learned of a guitar with removable finge…
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…