★Edition Wandelweiser
11 Microexercises
2013 release **
"11 Micro-Exercises were invented by Christian Wolff in response to a commission from the Miniaturist Ensemble. For Wandelweiser Editions, other miniaturists perform these eleven pieces (plus two bonus pieces): Beat Keller and Reza Khot. Keller and Khot are two electric guitarists who pierce the ivory (sometimes tear it) and respect the principle of a musical art free from preconceptions. Nine seconds, twenty-two, one minute and thirteen, or eleven minutes and forty-seven… The le…
drei, 1-21
2013 release **
From the early 2000s, Stefan Thut began a series of scores named according to the number of performers, somewhat like Cage's later works. Ranging from one performer to seven, including the more indeterminate "some" and "many," each score is very open, completely undefined, with a few written indications (limited mainly to volume restrictions), plus a kind of guiding thread to follow (composed of letters, lines, etc.) during the performance, without any indication of duration, for…
das wetter in offenbach
2014 release ** Thomas Stiegler and Hannes Seidl's 'das wetter in offenbach' (2010) is a radiophonic work mixing field recordings in the city of Offenbach with sine waves.
Urs Peter Schneider . Klavier
2014 release **
"Peter Streiff’s music moves in historical webs, encompassing the connected worlds of allusion and individuality in a language that is at once direct and cryptic. This new disc of his piano music, performed by fellow composer Urs Peter Schneider, is a microcosm of Streiff’s creative trajectory. For ease of comprehension, I will use English versions of composition titles in this review. “Of Magic” (1970), the earliest material represented here, has a fair amount in common with the…
Kompositionen 1973-1986
2014 release **
"The structure of this 2-disc set is durationally symmetrical, four pieces lasting (more or less) 8, 60, 60 and 8 minutes. I've no idea how representative this sample is of Schneider's work (I think it's my first experience of it) but there seems to be at least something of a common thread int he way he uses quasi-repetition of forms (not in a minimalist sense) that, over time, result in something larger than the individual elements. "Zeitgehöft" (the title of a collection of poe…
120112
2014 release **
"The three pieces presented by Borg (piano) and Nørstebø (trombone) are spellbinding explorations of the low tone. Three pieces but they segue into one another effortlessly and, with the possible exception of slight variation in pitch (and I'm not even sure of that) are pretty much indistinguishable from each other unless I missing some subtle pattern shift. The sounds are all low and sustained--bottom of the keyboard piano and extremely low trombone (the disc says, simply, "trom…
songs and piano pieces
2014 release **
"Beethoven’s fifth symphony begins with that now-iconic but aphoristic “short-short-short-long” musical motive about which so much has beenwritten and said, a radical statement for string melody without harmonic accompaniment. On his 2008 composition “Song 2,” for bass flute, Wandelweiser composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos essentializes the very concept of a similarly constructed four-note phrase, presenting each gesture in isolation, long silences allowing for listener recont…
24 petits preludes pour la guitare
2013 release **
"True, there are 24 pieces contained on this disc, which range in duration from 2:00 to 3:45, but in part due to the large amount of silence in which the single notes are swathed and also because the composition are "of a piece", the recording reads almost as a continuous work. The preludes seem to consist of sets of two to five notes, generally, perhaps always, in a rising pattern and very often diminishing as they appear, purely struck, with incredible gentleness, so much so th…
Hildegard von Bingen : John Cage
2012 release **
"Combining the deep voice of Hildegard von Bingen and the inner song of John Cage (or vice versa)—what a wonderful idea, isn't it? And it's Irene Kurka herself who seems to have come up with it. She performs Hildegard nine times and gives her version of Sonnekus² (in nine parts, which Satie's Je te veux inspired Cage to use). She blends, finally, the eighteen pieces already sung. She merges attachment to faith and detachment from all things, Latin and the elevation it encourages …
On Foot
This compact disc contains recordings of pieces from the 2005 project On Foot, onwhich Craig Shepard walked 250 miles in 31 days across Switzerland. Every day, he composed a new piece, wrote it down, and performed it outdoors in a public space such as a bridge, public square, intersection, or mountain-top. The pieces are intended to frame the everyday sounds of the place in which they are heard. The performances on this CD were recorded in the work spaces of the performers.Careful listening will…
keine fernen mehr
2010 release **
"Two discs, 17 tracks per disc, just whistling, never remotely pyrotechnic, always with substantial breath in the tone, emerging from the very audible hum of the room, subsiding back into it. Slow, hints of melody but, fundamentally, the kind of things you'd whistle to yourself when deeply thinking of matters, perhaps not even realizing you're whistling. It's so personal, in a way, yet you don't (at least I don't) have any uncomfortable feeling of eavesdropping. Beuger is a fluti…
piano piece
2010 release **
"Arrayed neatly, but in dislocated sequence, across clean white pages using a standard music notation software, the material of Tim Parkinson's piano pieces suggests anonymity. Traces of other musics may be suggested by some of the material, though the focus for the performer is on projecting the sounds without the clutter of imposed interpretative rhetoric. In so doing both composer and performer declare themselves and this beautiful music is revealed."
duos
Since their formation in 1998 at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, duo Contour have commissioned and performed over 40 new pieces by composers from Asia, Europe, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States. Their collaborative work has combined the acoustic world of trumpet and percussion with dance, electronics, improvisation, origami, story-telling, theatre and video, as well as and with other musicians in their 'duo Contour plus….' programmes. The duo has been resident at …
im sefinental
Stefan Thut 'Aussen raum' (2008). Manfred Werder '2008(3)' (2008). A field recording near a river divided in two parts.
two . too (for erwin-josef speckmann)
two . too (for erwin-josef speckmann) two: two, who are at one with anotherzwei, die sich einig sind too: two, who are at one with another (twice)zwei, die sich einig sind (zweimal) text: “as the full moon rises / the swan sings / in sleep / on the lake of the mind” (kenneth rexroth)indes der vollmond steigt / singt der schwan / im schlaf / auf des geistes see
Exercise 15
"Exercise 15" was made out of and invites transformations or transcriptions. It's for piano or ad hoc instrumental arrangement. Its material is from a 1920s song "Union Maid" (as I found it in Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer's collection "Songs of Work and Protest") by Woodie Guthrie using an earlier popular song tune. The tempo of the music is not specified. Sometimes it's played rather fast, as the original tune probably was, sometimes at a deliberate, 'prosaic' tempo. Here it's in a slow motio…
string quartets
Material can be anonymous. Consider, for example, the middle voices in medieval hymn books: unadorned, not artful, a simple handiwork, a leisurely alternation of single notes. It might be a scale, or, beyond music, the stones of a wall, not artfully stacked, but simply and properly, the formal idea being nothing other than that of a wall. When I was working on the String Quartet (1988), I encountered the painting of Agnes Martin. I saw clear-cut forms, not overgrown with rhetoric and figuratio…
abregistrieren
2005 release **
“select a sound of one or three tones within the range of an octavedistribute the pitches between the keyboards (use each pitch only once)select 3 – 31 stops from principals, flutes and reeds and distribute them evenly between the keyboards (do not use mixtures)play the pitches and hold the keys down (e.g. with lead weights)push the stop very slowly until you hear a change – then stop the movement, listen for a while and pull another register in the same way for a long time, on…
Solo pieces
2005 release **
music that allows sounds to sound:to die away, completely, into silence sounds thought from their end:not moving forward, but drawing back. this creates space, expanse, a delicate serenity:silence - and what it shelters - becomes audible. this is singing with the ears:barely more than silence. a singing which not only makes,but becomes space: a space for worlds. phrases are also sounds:unfolded, laid out as a path. sound paths that come into being first when followed,invariably t…
blue/dense
2005 release **
this piece uses 17 tones in whole-numbered proportions to a virtual fundamental of G'' (25Hz).the piece is a kind of analysis of the overtone region from the fifth to seventh partials and the corresponding regions one and two octaves above (10th to 14th, 20th to 28th partials).the tones are played and recorded during the first three parts and played back as samples at specific times.as many as 28 tones may sound simultaneously.the flute sounds are amplified, which allows us to he…