Choices & Melodies
“Choices & Melodies” regroup two pieces, composed by Cyril Bondi and d’incise and echoing in a different aspects the “13 & 27” CD recently released by Another Timbre, as both were recorded at the same time in the summer 2016. With “Two choices” the Insub Meta Orchestra exposes its richness of sonic production and variety of sources, acoustic and electronic, with simple instruction of producing two noises per person and the possibility of a change every five seconds. From this rigid structu…
Landfall
Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet's Landfall, inspired by her experience of Hurricane Sandy, is the first collaboration between the iconic storyteller/musician and the groundbreaking string quartet, who perform together on the recording. Landfall juxtaposes lush electronics and traditional strings by Kronos with Anderson\'s powerful descriptions of loss, from water-logged pianos to disappearing animal species to Dutch karaoke bars. The Washington Post calls it "riveting, gorgeous."
Complete Early Percussion Works
Stockhausen’s early percussion music is among the most visionary of the percussion repertoire. This unique collection features some works which are almost impossible to find elsewhere. Zyklus was not only a novel composition in terms of its treatment of time and structure, it was also the first percussion solo ever performed. Kontakte, a masterpiece for piano and percussion with 4-channel tape, challenges to performers to play together and to make the maximum number of “contacts” with the tape. …
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…
A Cage of saxophones 1
Between 1983 and 1991 John cage wrote three pieces specifically for saxophones, Four5, Five4 and Hymnkus, which are combined here for the first time on CD. In addition, Cage authorized Ulrich Krieger's arrangement for saxophone of Ryoanji. Krieger also made a saxophone arrangement of Five, one of the few compositions from this period performable on any instruments. This unique disc concentrates on Cage's late works for saxophone. A CAGE OF SAXOPHONES VOL.2 (mode 160), features a combination of…
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…
Music For High Winds
Clarinetist Carol Robinson had the unique opportunity to work directly with Giacinto Scelsi on his music: "I discovered this music in 1981. Captivated, I began including pieces in concerts the following year. A friend of the composer who attended a concert gave him a recording of my performance. As a result, Scelsi invited me to Rome. In his apartment overlooking the Roman forum... On numerous occasions we worked in detail on all his music for clarinet, an instrument particularly important…
Musica Da Camera
Luigi Dallapiccola's Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera for piano, Tartiniana Seconda and Parole di S.Paolo; Goffredo Petrassi's Sestina d'autunno "Veni Creator Igor", Seconda Serenata Trio, Dialogo Angelico for 2 flutes; Ensemble Dissonanzen.
1 = Petrassi: Sestina d'autunno "Veni Creator Igor", for mandolin, guitar, viola, cello, double-bass & percussion (1981-82).2-12 = Dallapiccola: Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera, for piano (1952).13 = Petrassi: Seconda Serenata Trio, for mandolin, guitar & har…
Mexico: New Music For Strings
This recording features six of the most inventive younger composers (born between 1957 and 1977) in Mexico's contemporary music scene. Irvine Arditti and the Arditti Quartet gave the first performances of many of these works for string quartet or solo violin. The works were recorded in 2002 during the first Radar festival." Composers featured: Juan Felipe Waller, Hebert Vázquez, Germán Romero, Iván Naranjo, Rogelio Sosa, Hilda Paredes. Recorded at: April 1-3, 2002 (Irvine Arditti) and April 10-1…
Complete Music For Violin & Piano
Here, collected for the first time, are all of Morton Feldman's compositions for violin and piano. It is also a kind of walk through his compositional development, from the Webernesque early Piece for Violin and Piano (1950); through the experiments with graphic notation in Projection 4 (1951); followed by an excursion into the jungle-like density of David Tudor's energy in Extensions 1 (1951); to the cryptic notational riddles of Vertical Thoughts 2 (1963); from the dry carpet-dusting Spring …
The Orchestral Works 1: Hymnos, Hurqualia, Konx-Om-Pax
Volume 2 in Mode's Scelsi Edition presents three of his rarely heard and recorded orchestral works, vividly captured in outstanding sound. Hymnos' large orchestra is divided antiphonally into two almost identical groups, symmetrically placed on each side of a central axis made up of the organ, timpani, and percussion. About halfway through the piece, as a result of accumulated pedal tones and their harmonics, the aura of a phantom choir miraculously appears-or so it seems-in a spine-tingli…
The Number Pieces 2: Five³
During the last few years of his life, John Cage wrote many pieces in the same general vein as Five3. They are often referred to as "the number pieces." This references the titles of the pieces, which are all simply the number of the performers. Superscripts are added as necessary to distinguish the individual pieces (this is the third quintet, for example). These works are also called "the time-bracket pieces," a reference to the notation of the pieces. Each event in the piece consists of…
String Quartet No. 1
The Flux Quartet follow their acclaimed, best selling recording of Feldman’s monumental 6-hour String Quartet No. 2 (mode 112, 5-CDs or 1-DVD) with this release, thus completing their cycle of Feldman’s string quartets. String Quartet No. 1 is one of Feldman’s earliest long-scale pieces. Unlike other recordings of String Quartet No.1, the FLUX recording respects Feldman’s tempo and all of the repeats, making it the longest recording of the piece.
The set also contains Feldman’s two quartets f…
Trio
The expansive length of Morton Feldman’s Trio (1 hr., 45 min., 22 sec.) requires a new approach to listening, which takes scale, the physical experience of sound, and novel uses of musical memory into consideration. With his delicate manipulation of musical materials, Feldman blurs the listener’s sense of time as their musical memory struggles to distinguish between past and present sounds - listeners are free to lose themselves in the beauty of each musical moment. Aki Takahashi and Rohan…
Njinga: The Queen King – The Return of a Warrior
Written and Directed by IONE Original music and Sound by Pauline Oliveros Traditional Congolese Music by Titos Sompa Set and Costume Design by Valerie Maynard, Dance and Movement by Carol Chappell, Nego Gato, Biza Sompa and Titos Sompa, Traditional Brazilian Music and Dance by Nego Gato.
Njinga the Queen King is a collaborative effort between writer/director Ione and composer Pauline Oliveros, which they refer to as “a play with music and pageantry.” It is based on historica…
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 w…
Music in 2 Dimensions – Works for Flute
In honor of the 40th anniversary of great composer/ conductor Bruno Maderna’s (1920-73) death, Mode is pleased to release the first complete CD of Maderna’s music for flute. The flute played an important part in Maderna’s oeuvre due to his friendship with the exceptional flutist Severino Gazzelloni, who had premiered almost all of the flute compositions. Musica su due dimensioni is among the earliest examples to make live music interact with electro-acoustic sounds recorded on tape. There …
Cage Edition Vol.52 : The Works for Percussion 4
**CD Edition** A Flower; The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs; 51’15.657” for a speaking percussionist (realization Whiting); Music for Two (By One) (realization Whiting) — Bonnie Whiting, voice & percussion + Allen OTTE/John CAGE: Connecting Egypt to Madison through Columbus Ohio, Cage, and the History of the American Labor Movement (realization Otte) — Allen Otte, voice, prepared piano, percussion.
Xenakis Edition 15, Orchestral Works
**CD Edition** Metastaseis A (first recording), Orchestra Sinfonica RAI; Terretektorh for 88 musicians dispersed among the public; Nomos Gamma for 98 musicians dispersed among the public — Residentie Orkest The Hague, Arturo Tamayo, conductor.
String Quartet No. 2
In the 1970s Morton Feldman took up the study and collecting of antique Turkish rugs, a highly evolved and exquisite folk art. The rugs are intricately patterned, symmetrical in basic design but with constant variation and displacement in the detailed execution of that design; strikingly and subtly colored, including fine variegations of principal colors resulting from the dyeing process. Analogies are clear to Feldman's music as it takes up large-scale patterning, partly working with his famili…