Earle Brown, Dal Niente Projects

This disc gathers chamber music by Earle Brown, the American composer who stood with Cage, Feldman and Wolff in the New York School. In the early 1950s he opened music to graphic notation and open form. Most of the programme comes from Folio, including December 1952, a page of horizontal and vertical lines that became a landmark of graphic notation. Alongside it are Four Systems (1954), Corroboree (1964) for three pianos and Trio for Five Dancers. The disc closes with a late work, Tracking Pierrot (1992), so the label's description of early works written between 1952 and 1964 covers all but the last track.

The performers come from Dal Niente Projects, the London series directed by the clarinettist and painter David Ryan to present neglected modernist and experimental works. Among them are John Tilbury, Tania Chen and Robert Coleridge on piano and Simon Allen on vibraphone, marimba and other percussion, with viola, cello and clarinets. Most of the disc was recorded at Gateway Studios in Kingston upon Thames between July and September 2002. Tracking Pierrot comes from a concert at the Union Chapel in London on 12 November 1999. The Folio pieces appear in several versions, two each of October 1952 and November 1952 and three of 1953. Heard side by side, they show the open scores taking different shapes. Four Systems is given in what the label calls a multi-timbral realisation.

Released by Matchless Recordings in 2002 as MRCD 52, a CD with a cover painting by Ryan, Nov 2002 (oil and wax on canvas).