Composition / Contemporary

Six chamber works by Keeril Makan performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble and pianist Cory Smythe, including Mercury Songbirds, Afterglow for solo piano and Mu for prepared violin played by Erik Carlson.

Four works by Johannes Schöllhorn: the concert piece clouds and sky for piano and orchestra with the WDR orchestra, rota for contrabass clarinet and string quartet, red and blue for percussion sextet, and a self-same song for solo contrabass clarinet…

First complete recording of John Cage's works for organ, played by Gary Verkade on the organ of Gammelstad Church, Sweden: Some of 'The Harmony of Maine', Souvenir, ASLSP and Organ2/ASLSP, with 4'33'' on the DVD only.

Helmut Lachenmann performs with and supervises Ensemble Signal in Zwei Gefühle, Musik mit Leonardo for speaker and ensemble, and plays three of his own piano works, recorded after a four-concert tour of the programme.

John Cage's early percussion chamber works from 1935-1942, including the three Constructions, Trio, Quartet and Living Room Music, played by Third Coast Percussion, with the first movement of Living Room Music recorded in the Ford House.

DVD of French-school percussion theatre by Aperghis, Kagel, Globokar, Alvarez and Drouet, performed by Aiyun Huang and colleagues and directed by Hans Fjellestad and Anton Cabaleiro, the first commercial video release of these works.

First CD recording of Songbirdsongs by John Luther Adams, a cycle for piccolos, ocarinas, flutes and percussion based on real bird songs, with Callithumpian Consort, plus Strange Birds Passing.

Three of John Cage's late number pieces, Five, Seven and Thirteen, recorded in 1993-94 by Essential Music of New York and released for the first time. Thirteen, Cage's final completed work, is heard in only its second recording.

Multimedia adaptation of Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers by guitarist Marco Cappelli, narrated by John Turturro in English and Enzo Salomone in Italian, with music by Sintax Error and video art by Anne Rothschild.

Roger Reynolds's Sanctuary for spatially distributed percussion ensemble and live electronics, presented in three versions on a double DVD: a studio performance, a live performance at the National Gallery of Art and excerpts from the Salk Institute.

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.

Chaya Czernowin's Maim (Water), a 50-minute orchestral triptych with five soloists (tubax, oboe and musette, piano and harpsichord, guitars, viola) and live electronics, played by the Konzerthausorchester Berlin under Johannes Kalitzke.

Second volume of Iannis Xenakis's works for piano with instruments, played by Aki Takahashi with Rohan de Saram, the JACK Quartet and the Callithumpian Consort, including a new recording of Eonta for piano, trumpets and trombones.

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.

Complete piano works by Roger Reynolds on two CDs, from Epigram and Evolution (1960) to The Angel of Death (1998-2001), played by Yuji Takahashi, Eric Huebner and Marilyn Nonken, with new recordings and remastered analog reissues.

Pianist Heather O'Donnell places short works by Charles Ives, including the first recording of London Bridge Is Fallen Down!, alongside first-recorded piano responses by Zimmermann, Finnissy, Tenney, Corbett and Schneller.

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.

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.

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 Hirtengesän…

First recordings of four Piano Sonatas by Chris Newman (Nos. 1, 4, 6 and 10, composed 1982-2004), played by Michael Finnissy, a collaborator of the composer for over twenty-five years, in composer-supervised recordings.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All of John Cage's short works for prepared piano on two CDs, everything except Sonatas and Interludes, played by Philipp Vandré.

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.

Six compositions from 2001-2004 by Tim Hodgkinson, co-founder of Henry Cow, for ensembles, clarinets and electronics, with the Hyperion Ensemble and other guests and Hodgkinson himself on clarinet and bass clarinet.

First CD collection of George Cacioppo's music: six chamber works from 1960-66 including Time on Time in Miracles, Advance of the Fungi and Holy Ghost Vacuum or America Faints, played by French ensembles, with Cacioppo himself on electric organ.

Chamber works by Luigi Dallapiccola and Goffredo Petrassi, alternated for comparison, played by Naples-based Ensemble Dissonanzen: Quaderno musicale di Annalibera, Tartiniana seconda, Parole di S. Paolo, Sestina d'autunno and Seconda serenata-Trio.

Six works by Mexican composers born between 1957 and 1977, for string quartet and solo violin, recorded in 2002 at the first Radar festival in Mexico City by the Arditti Quartet and Irvine Arditti.

First recording of John Cage's Chess Pieces (1944), rediscovered in a painting and transcribed by Margaret Leng Tan, with her recording of Sonatas and Interludes and the first recording of Vittorio Rieti's Chess Serenade.

Two CDs of virtuoso piano fantasies and transcriptions on operas by Puccini, Bellini, Verdi, Debussy, Berg, Bussotti and Volans, played by their arranger Yvar Mikhashoff.

John Luther Adams's Strange and Sacred Noise, a nine-movement work for percussion quartet, in the composer-supervised first recording by Percussion Group Cincinnati, with a 60-minute interview with the composer.

All of Xenakis's chamber music for strings except the quartets, from Syrmos (1959) to the first recording of Ittidra (1996), played by Ensemble Resonanz under Johannes Kalitzke, with John Eckhardt on solo contrabass in Theraps.

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.

Chamber music by Mexican composer Hilda Paredes, 1998-2001, drawing on Mayan language and culture: works for string quartet, piano quintet, 21 musicians and vocal quartet, with the Arditti Quartet and Ensemble Modern.

First recording of all 44 Harmonies from Cage's Apartment House 1776, arranged for string quartet by Irvine Arditti and played by the Arditti Quartet, with Arditti's solo violin performance of Cheap Imitation.

Composer-supervised first recordings of Joël-François Durand's music on the four elements: La terre et le feu for oboe and ensemble, Les raisons des forces mouvantes for organ, La mesure des choses III and Athanor for orchestra.

Marilyn Nonken plays Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories, a single-movement solo piano work of almost 90 minutes, recorded in 2003 and available on two CDs and on DVD-Audio.