Reissues
For Philip Guston
*2022 stock* Performed by Julia Breuer (flutes), Matthias Engler (vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, tubular bells), Elmar Schrammel (piano, celesta). Recorded 2007. One of Feldman's classic long-term late works, written in 1984. Wergo is proud to pr…
Canti Del Capricorno
*2022 stock* Michiko Hirayama inspired Giacinto Scelsi to write his twenty-part cycle "Canti del Capricorno" between 1962 and 1972. To this day the Japanese singer (b. 1923) is a unique performer of this spiritual yet energy-filled work for solo voic…
Nothing Is Real ...
*2022 stock* The focus of the pieces by Alvin Lucier on this CD is on the phenomena of resonance – sympathetic vibration – in many variations. “Time and again I find myself having to pare away any musical gestures in a work in order to uncover the tr…
Phase Patterns / Pendulum Music / Piano Phase / Four Organs
*2022 stock* "What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing" (Steve Reich, 1968). Minimal music, which numbers Steve Reich among its founders and as one of its most significant representatives,…
Ursonate Und Andere Konsequente Dichtung
*2022 stock* Kurt Schwitters’ “Sonate in Urlauten” [Sonata in Primal Sounds] is the prototypical work at the border between speech and music. The concise title of the work alone forges a suggestive link between language material and the musical form …
Fluxus
*2022 stock* George Brecht, Alison Knowles, Philip Corner. "Fluxus! The New York-born artists whose radio plays are collected on this CD, Philip Corner, Alison Knowles, and George Brecht, have appeared together in performances, and they are also conn…
James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet
*2022 stock* This work began life as a radio play in 1982, a commission from and for Klaus Schöning and Cologne’s WDR. Working on the principles of collage, Cage brought together 15 unlikely characters – Narrator, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Vocoder…
Sull'accordo mimetico
Sull’Accordo Mimetico (On the Mimetic Chord) dates back to the end of the 80’s. It was commissioned by the artistic director of the ParcoScenico Festival, held in Treviso, Italy. Since the area where artists and the public gathered after the Festival…
Mantra
*2022 stock* 'Composed in 1970, Mantra, for two pianos and ring modulation, was one of the decisive turning points in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s career. The 70-minute piece not only signalled a break with the text-based intuitive works, relying heavily …
Musica Da Camera
*2022 stock* The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki used to write chamber music even as a student in Krakow. He was writing the chamber music works for himself, then already an accomplished violinist, and his fellow students (The title "Sonata for …
Palimpsest | Épéi | Dikhthas | Akanthos
*2022 stock* 'This collection of ensemble works, six altogether, ranges across the last two decades of Iannis Xenakis's life. It includes the last two pieces he composed, Zythos, for trombone and six marimbas, and O-Mega, for percussion and ensemble,…
For Franz Kline · For Frank O'Hara · De Kooning · Piano Piece To Philip Guston
*2022 stock* Wergo presents Moton Feldman's compositions For Franz Kline · For Frank O'Hara · De Kooning · Piano Piece To Philip Guston. Performed by Ensemble Avantgarde.
Le Grand Macabre
*2022 stock* György Ligeti’s polymorphous music, a product of the 1960s, promises no familiar idiom even today. Ligeti himself described the bizarre and exaggerated music of Le Grand Macabre to be “far removed from the territory of Wagner, Strauss an…
Sonata XIII / Music For Marcel Duchamp / Song Books I-II / Empty Words III
*2022 stock* The first works of Cage are experimental and related to the future. "The Future of Music" - a Credo" is the title of his first manifesto, and this future bears the name "all-sound music".
Works For Piano, Toy Piano & Prepared Piano · Vol. III
*2022 stock* It may come as a surprise but one of the leading creators of keyboard music in the twentieth century is a composer by the name of John Cage. Cage’s reputation is so deeply associated with the avantgarde, with chance music, graphic notati…
Etudes Australes
*2022 stock* 'Etudes Australes was composed specifically for Grete Sultan, so this album is among the definitive recordings. As an indeterminate piece for solo piano (okay, well, a "duet for two hands"), this sounds very similar to Music of Changes, …
La Fabbrica Illuminata / Ha Venido, Canciones Para Silvia / Ricorda Cosa Ti Hanno Fatto In Auschwitz
*2022 stock* Magnetic tape for serial use is not the prerogative of Stockhausen or the French members of the GRM. On the other side of the Alps, at the RAI Studio di Fonologia in Milan, Luigi Nono worked for a long time on the development of a new fo…
Circles · Sequenza I · Sequenza III · Sequenza V
Wergo presents Luciano Berio's compositions Circles · Sequenza I · Sequenza III · Sequenza V.
Kammerkonzert / Ramifications / Lux Aeterna / Atmosphères
*2022 stock* These pieces (mostly recorded within a couple years of Ligeti writing them) are superb in that unsettling way of most of Ligeti's music. The "Kammerkonzert" is amazing - one of the best things I've heard of his. It's great to hear the ha…
Continuum / Zehn Stücke Für Bläserquintett / Artikulation / Glissandi / Etüden Für Orgel / Volumina
*2022 stock* This CD of works by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti represents an extremely interesting combination of several of his serene works for harpsichord, organ, and wind quintet with two electronic compositions from the late 1950s.