★Mode

Margaret Leng Tan's follow-up to The Art of the Toy Piano: Cage's Suite for Toy Piano and Dream, a George Crumb song and other pieces, played on six toy pianos plus toy instruments, grand piano, music boxes and percussion.

Four-CD box of duo improvisations for saxophones, drums, percussion and electronics by Anthony Braxton and Gerry Hemingway, their first recorded collaboration in twelve years, made at Wesleyan University in August 2007.

Two CDs of John Cage works for saxophones and other instruments, played by Ulrich Krieger and Intersax, including the only available recording of Party Pieces, written with Cowell, Harrison and Thomson.

Morton Feldman's Trio for violin, cello and piano, lasting one hour, 45 minutes, in a recording with Aki Takahashi, Marc Sabat and Rohan de Saram, two of whom worked closely with the composer.

Charisma X, a 2008 documentary film by Efi Xirou on the life and work of Iannis Xenakis, from childhood to his last work Omega, with archive footage, interviews and performances of his music by Sylvio Gualda, Benny Sluchin and others.

Scelsi Edition volume 2: three rarely recorded orchestral works, Hymnos, Hurqualia and Konx-Om-Pax, played by the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic under Juan Pablo Izquierdo, with selections from Canti del Capricorno sung by Pauline Vaillancourt and Douglas Ahlstedt.

Fourth volume of Giacinto Scelsi's piano works: Hispania, Suite No. 5 Il Circo and Suite No. 6 I Capricci di Ty, three first recordings of large early works from the 1930s, played by Stephen Clarke.

Thirty-seven miniatures by Howard Skempton, interleaving solo piano pieces played by Daniel Becker with choral settings of Mary Webb, Edward Thomas, Emerson and others sung by EXAUDI under James Weeks; several are first recordings.

John Cage's Five³ (1991), one of the late number pieces, for trombone and string quartet, played by Monique Buzzarté and the Arditti String Quartet. Cover etching by Cage, liner notes by James Pritchett.

Second volume of John Cage works for saxophones, played by Ulrich Krieger and his ensemble: early pieces of unspecified instrumentation, saxophone parts drawn from Atlas Eclipticalis and Concert for Piano and Orchestra, and the first saxophone version of Two.

Six minimalist works by Reich, Riley, Andriessen, Gann, Adams and David Lang played by Orkest de Volharding under Jussi Jaatinen, including first recordings of City Life for wind orchestra and Kyle Gann's Sunken City.

Xenakis Edition volume 10 and the first complete recording of Iannis Xenakis's string quartets, played by the JACK Quartet: Tetras, Tetora, ST/4-1,080262 and Ergma, the last quartet, released on CD and surround-sound DVD.

Six chamber works by Frank Denyer from 1973-2001, including Out of the Shattered Shadows 1 and 2, Faint Traces, Music for Two Performers, Play and Passages, in composer-supervised performances by The Barton Workshop.

Mode's 200th release: John Cage himself performs Empty Words together with Music for Piano (with Yvar Mikhashoff) and the solo work One7, recorded at Buffalo in April 1991 and released for the first time.

First recording of Peter Ablinger's 33-127 (2002) for electric guitar and CD, played by Seth Josel: 95 pieces in which a descending scale meets recorded street noise, in just under an hour.

Cornelius Cardew's graphic score Treatise in the only performance of its 2-hour version, recorded live in Prague on 15 October 1967 by the QUaX Ensemble directed by Petr Kotik, remastered from the original analog tape.

John Cage's Five Stone Wind (1988) and Cartridge Music (1960), both written for Merce Cunningham dances, played by David Tudor, Takehisa Kosugi and Michael Pugliese. 2008 remaster of the 1991 release, Cage Edition volume 4.

Iannis Xenakis Edition volume 2 of electronic works: Polytope de Cluny and Hibiki hana ma, remixed to stereo by Gerard Pape, and the ensemble score for the 1957 film Fer Chaud, remastered from its soundtrack.

Thirteen first recordings of early Feldman works from 1950 to 1953, including Intersection for magnetic tape, the Music for Jackson Pollock film score with Pollock's narration, Nature Pieces and Variations, played by pianist Philipp Vandré and the Turfan Ensemble.

The first complete recording of Giacinto Scelsi's music for double bass, played by Robert Black with guests on cello, harp, tam-tam and second bass, including Ko-Tha in Fernando Grillo's transcription.

First recording of Iannis Xenakis's Kraanerg (1968) for 23 instruments and 4-channel tape, with the tape restored from the analog masters, played by the Callithumpian Consort conducted by Stephen Drury.

Henning Lohner's 1993 composed film in memoriam John Cage, 130 minutes long, combining interviews, found footage and concert performances with 42 personalities in conversation, plus a complete video of 4'33".

DVD of two films by Evans Chan on pianist Margaret Leng Tan: the documentary Sorceress of the New Piano (2004) and the bonus film The Maverick Piano (2007), with performances of Cage, Ge Gan-ru, Satie and Twining and toy piano.

Lydia Kavina plays theremin works with Ensemble Sospeso: first recordings of music by Howard Shore, Olga Neuwirth, Christian Wolff and Percy Grainger, and Miklós Rózsa's chamber version of Spellbound, premiered at Lincoln Center in 2000.

Four recent works by Frank Denyer for very quiet voices and rarely combined instruments, including muted strings, flute, clarinet and percussion, played by The Barton Workshop under Denyer and James Fulkerson.

First complete disc of Frances White's electroacoustic works, five first recordings for electronic sound alone or with viola, double bass, shakuhachi and string quintet, inspired by a bridge over the Delaware River.

A complete video realization of John Cage's 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs by Don Gillespie, Roberta Friedman and Gene Caprioglio, filmed at 147 New York City locations in 1994-95 with durations set by the I-Ching.

Chamber music by Hans Werner Henze, weighted toward pieces drawn from his theatre works, played by the Naples-based Ensemble Dissonanzen: Ein kleines Potpourri from Boulevard Solitude, Toccata Mistica, Drei Tentos and Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge among others.

Two multi-channel electronic works by Iannis Xenakis from the 1970s, Hibiki Hana Ma and Polytope de Cluny, restored from the original tapes and mixed for 5.1 surround and stereo by Gerard Pape.

Chamber works by Earle Brown from 1952 to 1999, from Folio and Four Systems to Tracer, with Christian Wolff and Joan La Barbara among the performers and the tape piece Octet in a new transfer.

Vocal works by Luciano Berio, among them Folk Songs, Sequenza III, Chamber Music, O King and Circles, sung by Christine Schadeberg with Musicians Accord, reissued with the first recording of Quattro Canzoni Popolari.

Early works by Gavin Bryars from 1969-71: first recordings of Pre-Mediaeval Metrics and Made in Hong Kong, plus 1, 2, 1-2-3-4 and The Squirrel and The Ricketty Racketty Bridge, played by Ulrich Kreiger, Seth Josel and others.

The first complete recording of Luciano Berio's Sequenzas for solo instruments, with the alternate versions and nine further solo works, on four CDs with verses by Edoardo Sanguineti and a 104-page book.

Four films on John Cage by Frank Scheffer and Andrew Culver, gathered as From Zero: 19 Questions, Fourteen with the Ives Ensemble, Paying Attention and Overpopulation and Art with Ryoanji, plus extras.

First volume of Mode's Scelsi Edition and of the traversal of his piano works: Giacinto Scelsi's Sonatas No. 2 and No. 4 and the nine-movement suite Ttai, played by Louise Bessette.

First recordings of James Tenney's Poem, Monody, Seegersong #1 and #2 and the Ergodos series for computer music, with string, instrumental and percussion responses, played by the Barton Workshop and soloists.

Aki Takahashi plays Giacinto Scelsi's piano works in 2005 recordings, mostly pieces she prepared with the composer, including the Quattro Illustrazioni depicting the incarnations of Vishnu.

Five works by Alvin Lucier for solos and trios on beating tones and microtones: Piper for bagpipe, Fan for four kotos, 947 for flute, Silver Streetcar for triangle and Ever Present for flute, piano and alto saxophone.

Aldo Clementi's works with guitar, the first complete CD devoted to them, played by Geoffrey Morris and the ELISION Ensemble: Serenata, Dodici Variazioni, Albumblatt, The Plaint and others, most of them first recordings.

Two versions of David Tudor's electronic environment Rainforest, issued commercially for the first time: Version I (1968), made for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company with Takehisa Kosugi, and Version IV (1973), an electro-acoustic environment.