Esplorazione del Bianco
Sciarrino's work is avant-garde, and he is known for his use of isolated sonorities, extended playing techniques, frequent silences, and ironic or confrontational quotation of previous music (for instance, American pop music) or stories (such as in Lohengrin). His works include a large body of chamber music, including many pieces for wind instruments, five piano sonatas, and several operas or theatrical works: Da gelo a gelo, Infinito nero, Macbeth, Perseo ed Andromeda, Lohengrin, and Luci mie t…
Chants de la Mi-mort
Alberto Savinio was a very particular figure of poet, writer, musician, painter of primarily surreal subjects. His dramatic poem, "Les Chants de la Mi-Mort", played in Paris in 1914, seems to prefigure the mannequins that appear in so many of De Chirico's works: "voiceless men, without eyes or faces".
Concrete
Concrete follows from Robert Ashley's preoccupation in two previous operas with the kind of speech that has not been explored in opera -- in Dust (LCD 1006CD), the speech of the homeless; in Celestial Excursions (LCD 1007CD), the speech of people living together in a home for old people. The three operas are not a "trilogy" in any sense, but they all come from this preoccupation with or fascination with special kinds of speech and special kinds of states of mind. "The characters I'm interested i…
Da Cantare - Vocal Works 1951-1983
LAST FEW COPIES, long sold out: this important double CD box edition is the ultimate collection of the vocal compositions by one of the leading figures of Italian contemporary and aleatory music. The first piece -- 'Rot' -- is the complete version of the piece originally written in 1973, as the vocal parts have been added in July 2004 for its 2nd performance ever, held in Rome during the celebration of the 'Guaccero'year'. It is therefore different from the piece presented on the LP, which is pu…
L'oeuvre pour piano
A beautiful boxed edition with an outstanding version of Satie's piano music performed by Ciccolini, who is totally inside this music and makes the most of its contrasts of mood and atmosphere. Ciccolini's playing is pliant and graceful, and under his fingers the music seems to breathe and come alive: in many ways this is the most distintive and 'definitive' Satie piano music
The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
The People United Will Never Be Defeated! by the left-wing composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski is a landmark in American piano literature. The work comprises 36 variations on a protest song of the same name by the Chilean composer Sergio Ortega. Almost every bar is laden with pianistic virtuosity, yet the listener is carried through some very complex music in a wholly natural way. The variations themselves all symbolize the different phases and aspects of a struggle: from angry, highly-energiz…
The Desert Music
The Desert Music is a work of music for voices and orchestra composed by Steve Reich based on texts by William Carlos Williams. It consists of five movements, and in both its tempi and arrangement of thematic material, the piece is in a characteristic arch form (ABCBA). The piece is scored for a chorus of 27 voices: nine sopranos, and six each of altos, tenors and basses. It calls for a woodwind section comprising four flutes with three doubling on piccolo, four oboes with three doubling on cor …
Passio
Settings of the Passion are part of an ancient tradition within the Church in which all four Gospel accounts of the Passion are sung to plainchant in Holy Week. Over the centuries the three main elements of the story were separated out onto different reciting tones, and later given to different singers: a priest to sing the words of Jesus, a deacon the main narrative, and a sub-deacon the words of other minor characters including the crowd, Pilate and Peter. One of the earliest surviving Passion…
Fratres / Festina Lente / Summa
Some of the simplest and most spiritually affecting music you'll ever come across. "‘Philosophy’? He has none,” Nora Part once told a Spike Magazine interviewer. “He learns everything from the old Church Fathers.” Arvo Part's wife just might be right, as his music seems to be some of the simplest — and most spiritually affecting — you'll ever come across. It's no wonder that filmmakers often use his compositions in their work to further their emotional ends ("Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten…
Berliner Messe
With a number of modern classics already to his name, notably the Symphony No. 3 [Naxos 8.554591], Tabula Rasa [8.554591], Fratres and Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten [8.553750], culminating in 1982 with his largest work thus far, the St John Passion [8.555860], Arvo Pärt has during the past 20 years consolidated his reputation as one of the most significant composers at work today with a sequence of magnificent sacred choral works. The present recording provides an overview of Pärt’s mature…
A Portrait
Arvo Pärt: A Portrait. His Works, his Life. It contains 2 CDs with over 2½ hours of music, richly illustrated with rarely seen photographs, and a detailed essay by Nick Kimberley. The music of Arvo Pärt draws on traditions stretching back across the centuries, yet it could only have been written by someone who had lived through the complexities and contradictions of the last half-century. In his native Estonia, his early music incurred the wrath of the Soviet authorities; when he moved to the We…
Ballet mecanique
Ballet Mécanique (1924) was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmaker/artist Fernand Léger. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is Antheil's best known and most enduring work. It remains famous for its radical style and instrumentation as well as its storied history. In concert performance, the "ballet" is not a show of human dancers but of mecha…
Guitar music Vol.1
Often described as one of Europe's foremost living composers, Hans Werner Henze could perhaps more accurately be described as Europe's greatest living composer. Born in 1926, Henze's career spans sixty years, his style encompasses everything from neo-classicism to post-modernism, his works include everything from grand operas to intimate quartets, and his music embraces everything from ecstatic lyricism to agonizing expressionism. In this disc devoted to his music for guitar, Henze's intimate, l…
Concerto pour violon
On the present recording, the opening Prelude - with its magnificently sustained arc of tension and not-quite release - is followed by the dance from Act Two, Scene 3 which, in more obviously rhythmic fashion, celebrates the inauguration of the city of Akhetaten created by the new pharaoh; in an actual production, musicians appear on stage along with the rest of the cast. In both these extracts, some unsettling metrical ambiguities enhance the drama. And throughout the opera, the predominatingly…
Forms 1-4
Four works by James Tenney, each paired with music by an American composer to whom the Tenney composition is dedicated. The four 'Forms' compositions share with their senior partners -- Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Stefan Wolpe, and Morton Feldman -- a focus on sound and, in a more intuitive way, mood. Tenney's music draws upon an unorthodox and original approach to harmony. The compositions include James Tenney's 'Form 1' (1993) and Edgard Varese's 'Octandre' (1923), James Tenney's 'Form 2' (1993)…
String quartet (1979)
Morton Feldman’s String Quartet (1979) follows over a decade of compositional activity where the composer was constantly occupied with a new piece for orchestra. In the eleven years before the Quartet he produced fifteen orchestral works, beginning with On Time and the Instrumental Factor (1969) up to Violin and Orchestra (1979). In the following eight years only three orchestral works were written, The Turfan Fragments (1980), Coptic Light (1986) and For Samuel Beckett (1987). With the String Q…
Music For Keyboard 1935-1948 / The Early Years
This double-CD set combines two of the key titles of Columbia Records's
legendary "Music of Our Time" series curated by David Behrman. Jeanne
Kirstein's recording of Cage's early keyboard works remains a touchstone
of Cagean interpretation notwithstanding the passage of time. Christian
Wolff recalls, "I remember Cage saying that Jeanne Kirstein's playing
caught the spirit in which the pieces were written at the time he wrote
them-a kind of simple excitement and enthusiasm (also, surely, ou…
Earle Brown: Selected Works 1952- 1965
This long-awaited reissue of the CRI recording of Earle Brown’s (1926–2002) music is the best overview of his seminal early works. “It is obviously a great pleasure for me that Cri is re-releasing its 1974 recording of my work, and an even greater pleasure that I am able to add to the repertoire. The performance of Times Five and Novara still seem very fine representations of the works and are performed brilliantly by the Dutch musicians. December 1952 as realized by the late, brilliant pianist …
George Antheil: Piano Concerto No. 2
The Piano Concerto No. 2 is an experiment in classical form. The work contains the same sudden juxtapositions and abrupt contrasts of mood as his futurist music. But the excesses of his recent Ballet mécanique are compensated for by an almost spare, baroque orchestration and motifs that draw on Bach as much as on Stravinsky. In three movements, Antheil employs a more restrained but still exuberant style. The beautifully meditative slow movement is followed by a virtuosic and compelling toccata. …
Chamber And Gamelan Works
Lou Harrison believed fervently in music’s power to create cultural bridges. To this end he applied his prodigious skills and creative energies to creating syncretic works that link diverse musical languages. Faulted at times for his eclecticism, Harrison responded with a vibrant defense of hybridity, cultivating a musical multiculturalism long before that term—or even the concept—held the currency it now enjoys. Harrison’s major contributions to twentieth-century American music lie in three mai…