Composition / Contemporary

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.

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.

Elliott Carter's Quintet for Piano and Strings, Quintet for Piano and Winds, Syringa, Tempo e Tempi and two miniatures, recorded under his supervision for his 95th birthday with Ursula Oppens, the Arditti Quartet and Ensemble Sospeso.

All of Christian Wolff's works for violin and piano: the first recording of Pebbles (1999) and two performances of Duo for Violinist and Pianist (1961), played by the Canadian duo Sabat/Clarke with the composer present.

Alain Bancquart's large-scale microtonal cycle on the myth of the Minotaur, on texts by Marie-Claire Bancquart, recorded at its world premiere of the complete version at Radio France on 27 May 2000.

Giacinto Scelsi's music for high winds, solo and duo pieces for clarinet, flute, piccolo and oboe written between 1953 and 1970, played by Carol Robinson, Clara Novakova and Cathy Milliken. Volume 3 of Mode's Scelsi Edition.

First volume of Mode's Luc Ferrari series: Chansons pour le corps, built on interviews with women recorded in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and the symphonic tale Et si tout entière maintenant for actress, tapes and orchestra.

Cellist Michael Bach plays J.S. Bach's Cello Suite No. 3 on the curved bow, with two works by Dieter Schnebel, Mit Diesen Händen with mezzo-soprano Mechthild Seitz and Fünf Inventionen, first in the Art of the Curved Bow series.

John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano played by Philipp Vandré, the first recording on a Steinway “O”-type baby grand, the piano Cage composed on, with corrections to discrepancies in the printed score.

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.

First recording of the second half of John Cage's Freeman Etudes for violin, Books Three and Four, played by Irvine Arditti, the second release in his traversal of Cage's complete violin works for Mode. Released 1989.

John Cage's Freeman Etudes, Books 1 and 2 (the first sixteen etudes for solo violin), played by Irvine Arditti at blistering speed under the composer's supervision.

Debut recital by Argentinean pianist Haydée Schvartz with piano works by Pärt, Berio, Scelsi, Kagel, Cage, Gandini and Valverde, including first recordings of Berio's Brin and Leaf and Cage's Perpetual Tango.

Margaret Leng Tan's second recording, on piano: Cage's Primitive and In the Name of the Holocaust (first recordings), Hovhaness, Crumb, Satoh's Cosmic Womb for two pianos with digital delay, and Ge Gan-ru's Gu Yue. Released in 1988.

One  could  take Wolfram Schurig's Ultima  Thule  for  five  ensembles,  a  work  whose  mere  instrumentation  in-vokes  that  utopian  place  which,  according  to  the composer, should automatically be the goal of any authentic  artistic  activity…

Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the Prose Collection (1968–71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in whi…

With each composition, Annesley Black embarks courageously on a new experiment with an open future; while at the beginning of the compositional process the material can still mean many things, it gradually ceases to do so. And at some point, all ambi…

* 2021 stock * Acousmatic events dispense with performers. There are no musicians, even at public concerts. The audience is able to follow what is emanating from the loudspeakers with eyes closed and still not miss anything. What it hears is composed…

*2020 stock* Unlike my earlier freetonal and 12-tone works, my music since 1981 has been characterized by the use of repetition, and since 2004 by generally soft dynamics. While often termed "minimalist" or "postminimalist," I have come to prefer the…

*2020 stock* The double CD Improvisaciones is an homage to the Iberian baroque organ. Germán Valverde Usano’s music reminds one of the rich music tradition of the autonomous community of Castile and León as well as its rich cultural heritage with ove…

*2020 stock* To be within the sound - not to expect anything - no beautiful moments - no big emotions - no artfulness- but to follow, from note to note, a sound that carries the music, a sound within the sound: it changes slowly at a tempo that sugge…

* 2021 Stock * Philosophical writings from antiquity have frequently underlaid Zimmermann’s work of recent years, particularly in relation to notions of time an ‘harmonia’ [...] Another recurrent theme in later works is that of the ‘broken unison’ (b…

*In process of  stocking* The score for ‘Truth, exercise for a listener’ comprises a catalogue of options for a musical performer. In four parts each focusing on a different facet of our faculty to listen, it offers open ended material for the perfor…

Snare Drum + is the latest piece by legend composer/guitarist Taku Sugimoto in 2021, containing some variations of his snare drum solo piece which was written in 2011. In Snare Drum +, three or more additional performers try to follow the sound of sn…

Could you imagine music as a geyser? Erupting violently, waiting on tense standby, forever renewing itself... Or, just the contrary, as a sigh? An operatic sospiri, inhaling and exhaling, a tangible, rhythmic fluctuation... Or as walking with your ey…

** In process of stocking ** Kairos presents Parametrical Counterpoint by José Luis Hurtado. Composer José Luis Hurtado’s music has been performed across continents by ensembles and soloists such as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, JACK Quartet, …

** In process of stocking ** Salvatore Sciarrino, speaking of his own art, refers to fascinating encounters and movements in Sicilian civilisation, recollections of cultures, layered one upon the other over the centuries in the land of Empedocles. Hi…

**200 copies limited edition** Live recording from Dirk Serries’ Tonus project, which explores long-form, minimal, graphic score pieces.

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 Tu…

Saturations is a composition by Danish multidisciplinary artist Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard, and features a clarinet choir consisting of 19(!) clarinet players. Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (b. 1979) considers his work to be a basic research in realities workin…

The Swiss composer, sound and video artist Jannik Giger lifts the veils and creates access to the usually rather hidden, private worlds of music making on this album Krypta. The rage, teachings, interjections and body sounds of the mostly already dec…

Friedrich Cerha, whose monumental Spiegel cycle and his completion of Alban Berg'’s Lulu have secured him a place amongst the most eminent composers of our time, celebrated his 95th birthday on 17 February 2021. This album presents two of his lesser …

"This album is the result of years of work and friendship with the composer. It started with De Profundis, a piece which has had a deep impact on me as a musician and a person, and ended with it. Frederic attended many of my performances of the piece…

“Univers Parallèles presents us with two around twenty-minute slices of sparse piano wonderings and low-key sound making. It’s a release that shifts between just awakening drowsiness, and very creepy unease, with each track managing to create its own…

**CD version** Bram De Looze is a Belgian pianist and composer whose distinct musical vision has found its way through both solo projects and collaborations. His unique technical skill and musical maturity have earned him considerable critical acclai…

Formed in 2017, J Pavone String Ensemble features Jessica Pavone and Abby Swidler on violas, and Erica Dicker and Angela Morris on violins. The group's latest release, Lost And Found, combines both traditional notation and improvisation, with a focus…

* In pocess of stocking * In Better Shape Than You Found Me is a one-hour piece jointly composed and realized by American composer/violist Jordan Dykstra and Dutch composer/musician Koen Nutters in the year 2020. Dykstra plays viola, pitch pipe, crot…

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Parampara Festival 13.3.1992, a stunning performance by Amelia Cuni captured live in Berlin almost thirty years ago. Milanese by birth and resident in Berlin for many years, Cuni lived in India for over a decade, …

Why is there a harmonium (reed organ) at Ftarri? It all goes back to the Ftarri Festival held in Tokyo in November 2019. A quartet made up of Klaus Lang (harmonium), Johnny Chang (violin), Samuel Dunscombe (bass clarinet) and Michiko Ogawa (clarinet)…