Orchestral works and chamber music
ESSENTIAL RELEASE: The impulsive and electrifying Ata (1987) was referred to as "a kind of shifting of the senses" by the composer. The task of sketching N’Shima (1975) was actually assigned to a computer, whereas Metastaseis (1953-54) is devoted to architecture; the composition was derived from the bases of calculation used for the pavilion for the Brussels World's Fair of 1958 and is famous in particular for its glissandos and thickening clusters. Ioolkos, written for Donaueschingen in 1996, a…
Musica Viva 06
"Musica Viva 06" is another excellent release from the German Col Legno label, which specializes in the avant-garde. This disc includes three live performances -- the original 1981 recording of "Ais," featuring the incredible baritone voice of Spyros Sakkas, a new recording of "Troorkh," a trombone concerto, from 2000, and (drumroll please...) the world premiere of "Anastenaria," also from 2000, with the inimitable Xenakis champion Charles Bornstein conducting. As it turns out, "Metastas…
Psappha; Rebonds A & B; Okho pour trois djembés
This amazing CD contains some of the great works for solo percussion by the authorities in the field of contemporary music. The performances and recording quality are both superb! Clearly all care and effort went into the recording and text however, the dual layered dvd /cd is in PAL format, and will require said player or a media transfer to see the studio footage and interview with Xenikas. Considering we spend much time searching for the "right music" to add to our collection, this disc…
Les Espaces Acoustiques
Gérard Grisey’s Les espaces acoustiques is a groundbreaking work which defies assumptions about what music “ought” to be. Not for nothing did the composer describe it as “a great laboratory”, exploring the way we listen.The “Acoustic Spaces” cycle, begun in 1974 and completed in 1985, consists of six instrumental works that may be played consecutively, since each acoustic space extends the previous one. The unity of the whole is based on the formal similarity of the pieces and on the two acousti…
Rational Melodies
I am particularly pleased, because the result is so different from the solo flute recording of Eberhard Blum and the solo clarinet recording of Roger Heaton. It is not just another interpretation, but a case where interpreters have added so much insight to the music that the music itself has grown. When I was composing this music around 1982, I really thought I was simply writing melodies, but now these little pieces, though remaining melodies, have become something much more, something I…
Sax Pax for a Sax
Classical world-folk style by Moondog joined with jazz timbers by The London Saxophonic: the amazing and original collaboration between two distinct way of music.
Klangregionen 1951-2007
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…
The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts: John Cage, Morton
an amazing book that xplores the influences on the four musicians in the early 50s who, because of their deep interest in art, associated closely with the New York School of painters: Varese, Wolpe, Feldman and Cage. Musicians and artists have always shared mutual interests and exchanged theories of art and creativity. This exchange climaxed just after World War II, when a group of New York-based musicians, including John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and David Tudor, formed friendships wit…
Orchestral Works
Beautiful boxet with 5 CDs "It would be an understatement to say that Iannis Xenakis, who passed away nearly ten years ago, marked the whole second half of the 20th century. Whether or not assisted by computer, he built vast musical architectures, which diverge resolutely from what was being done at the time and is still being done: another world of sounds, combined according to a different, but never gratuitous, approach resulting in something magical. The listener is surrounded by sound, immer…
Arditti, Blum, Uitti
Long deleted, this is a Laszlo Dubrovay's 1988 LP with compositions for string quartet, bass flute and cello (performed by Frances Marie Uitti
Mondweiß
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
Sui poemi concentrici
Deluxe triple cd boxet "to write music for Dante’s entire Commedia... It was not without trepidation that I accepted the proposal for a television production. Especially to accompany a reading of the text, meaning to follow it step by step, but also to support it with solid architecture. It is the opposite of a background created fragmentarily with the situations to which it relates. [Rather] a complete structure that expresses itself within the poem, a unified plan. I thought of a single arch o…
Crippled Symmetry
orton Feldman's music continues to exert its fascination on listeners and record companies alike. After releasing its highly successful recording of the more than three-hour-long For Philip Guston, Bridge once again returns to the California EAR Unit for Crippled Symmetry, at only 87 minutes a mere bagatelle in terms of Feldman's late output. Well, maybe not. Scored for flutes, mallet percussion, and piano/celeste, Crippled Symmetry does exactly what the title says: it toys with not quite exact …
For Christian Wolff
For Christian Wolff is one of Morton Feldman's final compositions, and stands alongside the four-hours-plus For Philip Guston, the 70-minute For John Cage, and the six-hour String Quartet II. Writing about hearing this work, Christian Wolff says that 'I found the experience of listening to it beautiful and interesting -- it moves away partly from our (Morty's, John Cage's and mine) original preoccupation with just sound and sonority into areas of self-awareness about listening, being a listener,…
Complete String Quartets
Xenakis Edition Volume 10 - Complete String Quartets. On Surround Sound DVD only: The studio recording process was dynamically captured by a multiple camera shoot. Each quartet is given its own visual treatment. Filmed in High Definition Video, widescreen format. 48khz-24-bit high resolution 5.1 surround sound recording. 'Tetras' (1983). 'Tetora' (1990.) 'ST-4-1,080262' (1956-62). 'Ergma' (1994). The Jack Quartet: Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violins. John Pickford Richards, viola. Kevin…
Die Sephiroth
Buwen is both composer and organist, accompanying saxophonist Priesner on this rather academic program of duets. An earnest but dull remnant of late high modernism, the title piece inadvertently points up the limitations of classical sax technique, ignoring the expressive possibilities of the instrument almost completely. Buwen is self-effacing in the extreme, content to provide ground figures for Preisner to bounce off. Strange to think that one could write music this bland about a subject so c…
New Saxophone Chamber Music
Featuring compositions by Hanspeter Kyburz, Christoph Staude, Isabel Mundry, and Walter Zimmermann.
Chamber Works
One of the mysteries surrounding Jesús Rueda is the question how he was able to find a voice of his own, the various influences to which he was exposed during his development as a composer notwithstanding. He bid farewell to the constructivist rigor of Francisco Guerrero, and his pieces to do not immediately betray influences by Luis de Pablo, Giacomo Manzoni and Luigi Nono. Characteristic of his compositions are fast tempos, present in “slower” parts as brisk figurations, his sense of harmony a…
Chamber Music
It is with great shrewdness that Uroš Rojko has almost maxed out the unusual juxtapositions of an accordion with a viola and a piano, respectively. His fondness for the accordion may have its roots in his folk music past. On the present recording, however, these roots are not in evidence. Even the Tangos speak a language of their own, which Rojko creates by juggling characteristic fragments of tango, thereby reducing them to their essence. Even the first bars of his pieces exhibit the correspond…
Integrale de la musique de chambre
Long deleted, this is a must have cd collecting all the Scelsi pieces for string orchestra. "An internal struggle, stemming from the introductory tremolo, all through its serene yet chaotic means of lumonisity"