Iannis Xenakis

Featuring: Arditti Quartet

condition (record/cover): NM / NM - Insert included. The second RCA Red Seal LP gathers ST/4-1,080262 / Dikhthas / Ikhoor / Embellie / Kottos / Mikka / Mikka S, Iannis Xenakis in chamber version: pieces for solo strings or small ensembles where orchestral violence concentrates into individual gestures. The violinist or cellist faces scores that seem designed to destroy the instrument, strings pulled to the breaking point.

Kottos takes its name from the hundred-handed giant of Greek mythology, and the solo cello must indeed sound as if it had a hundred arms: simultaneous glissandi, impossible chords, techniques that conservatories don't teach because no one had ever required them before. Siegfried Palm, the piece's dedicatee, had to invent a way of playing that didn't previously exist.

Mikka and Mikka S continue the assault, the violin treated as surface to be scratched rather than string to be vibrated. Delicacy is not contemplated; these pieces hurt, both player and listener. RCA publishes everything with the same seriousness reserved for Jascha Heifetz or Vladimir Horowitz, a cultural wager that deserved more commercial fortune than it received.