Composition / Contemporary

Originally released in 2006, Mount A is Hildur Guðnadóttir’s debut solo album. Recorded alone with her cello and released under the pseudonym “Lost in Hildurness”, it marked the beginning of a deeply personal body of work created as a space to “hear my own thoughts”. Twenty years later, its music continues to resonate, inspiring new orchestral reinterpretations on This Will Be Us. This edition also marks the album’s first-ever release on vinyl.

Almost Starlight is the extraordinary new album by Jem Finer (hurdy-gurdy) and John Matthias (violin). Produced by Jay Auborn and recorded in a Medieval Church, deep in the Devon countryside, in the Summer of 2025, the music is suffused with light, heat and the natural acoustics of the space. The album defies categorisation; forced to pigeon hole it the nearest approximation would be ‘modern-classical’ but this ignores its myriad influences and explorations which encompass inspiration from Arvo …

A canon for three bassoons inspired by Hilma af Klint's 1915 Altarpieces: multiphonics, beating dissonances and whistle tones, between Scelsi, Radigue and Sunn O))). Produced by Randall Dunn.

Buh Records is proud to announce the release of "Cello in My Life", the new album by the renowned Ecuadorian composer Mesías Maiguashca. This deeply personal work reflects an intimate exploration of the relationship between the cello and the artist's life, realized in collaboration with celebrated cellist Gaby Schumacher. The album features six remarkable compositions spanning Maiguashca’s career from 1972 to 2015. Each piece offers a unique perspective on his groundbreaking approach to music, b…

'The literal meaning of “amphibian” is “double life” and applies to animals living part of their lives in water and part of their lives on land. In the program note to his electroacoustic classic Music for the Double Life of Amphibians, Morton Subotnick states that “amphibian” is to be taken as a metaphor for the work’s structure and programmatic content, which follow a metamorphosis of being through the stages of amphibian to beast to angel. But it also applies to the musical material, the doub…

In Complete Works for Multiple Piano, Morton Feldman’s quietly radical writing for three or more hands is heard as a three‑hour continuum of hushed, hovering sonorities, where time dilates and the piano becomes a shared, breathing instrument.

CD with 20-page booklet. Recorded March 2001, Hessischer Rundfunk, Frankfurt. "Time and again I find myself having to pare away any musical gestures in a work in order to uncover the true idea in a piece." Alvin Lucier said this about his own practice of stripping composition back to its acoustic logic - removing the performer's ego, the expressive gesture, the narrative arc, until only the phenomenon remains. What is left, in each of the five works gathered here, is resonance: sympathetic vibra…

*2022 stock* Giacinto Scelsi wrote the twenty Canti del Capricorno between 1962 and 1972 for and with the Japanese singer Michiko Hirayama, who inspired them and who for decades remained their unique performer. The cycle is for solo voice, with instruments in some of the songs: a spiritual yet energy-filled music made of single sounds, microtonal inflections, breath, cries and invented syllables, closer to ritual than to song. Hirayama, born in 1923, recorded it for Wergo when she came to Ulm in…

*2022 stock* The relationship between Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen was one of great mutual respect. The German composer admired the British conductor and composer for electrifying performances of Henze’s own and other composers’ works. Knussen was an untiring and enthusiastic champion of his friend Henze’s music. The recordings collected here display Knussen’s deep understanding of Henze’s music. Knussen conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in sensitive and meticulous performances of comp…

2022 Stock * With the legendary “Studio Reihe Neuer Musik” series, Wergo created a trademark of advanced contemporary music in the Sixties of the past century already. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the label now releases these highlights of 20th-century music history in an excellent sound quality on CD for the first time. The "Studio Reihe” starts with a CD with works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. His complex “pluralistic” style fuses past, present and future into a musical unit of the h…

György Ligeti's "Requiem" for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two mixed choirs and orchestra is one of his most impressive compositions - especially, when directed by Michael Gielen - and at the same time "the" requiem of the 20th century: Sound which is chromatically layered moves gradually from the lower registers to the higher, thus changing from mourning sounds into the promise of the eternal light. In the Kyrie the polyphonic net which was previously static begins to move gently. It was a part of t…

Lucy Railton's first record of solo cello, a forty-minute piece recorded at the Église du Saint-Esprit in Paris, working on just intonation and the resonance of the instrument.

Big tip! American percussionist and composer Michael Ranta is a legendary figure who has worked with some of the most significant names of 20th century music but despite this and impressive body of work of his own, he has remained an obscure figure.... Important Records and is pleased to present Transits: Volume 1 the first in a series of releases by composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies documenting never before heard chamber works mostly composed in the 1970s while Ranta was living in Taiwan.  B…

Five works for six or four percussionists in surround sound: Xenakis's Persephassa, Mâche's Aera, Zihua Tan's Sorites and two pieces by Alcides Lanza, played by the Music in Motion Ensemble directed by Aiyun Huang.

Overview of Lou Harrison's work from 1939 to 2000, with first recordings including the original septet version of Marriage at the Eiffel Tower, Mass to St. Anthony, Easter Cantata, arias from Young Caesar and Music for Remy.

The complete Imaginary Landscapes 1-5 and Credo in US by John Cage, with radios, phonograph records and percussion, played by Percussion Group Cincinnati in the first volume of the Mode Cage percussion works.

Atsuko Hatano is a contemporary classical viola player who works with electronics to add textures and layers to her sound. Located in Tokyo, Japan, she is a commanding instrumentalist and composer who constructs innovative compositions with strings and layered electronics. Working in isolation due to the Covid pandemic, Atsuko Hatano played violin, viola, synthesizer, and electronics to create these powerful, unique compositions. Insulated Paradise is an investigation into the social nature of h…

Documenting a reunion of Musica Elettronica Viva's founders Frederic Rzewski (piano and vocals), Richard Teitelbaum (keyboards and computer) and Alvin Curran (keyboards, computer and shofar) at the 32nd International Festival Of Current Music in Victoriaville, Canada in 2016.

Morton Feldman plays piano in a 1978 Deutschlandfunk concert recorded in Cologne, with flutist Eberhard Blum and percussionist Jan Williams: Why Patterns?, Extensions 3, Intermission 5 and The King of Denmark.

Two first recordings of John Cage's Scottish Circus (1990) with the Scottish traditional group The Whistlebinkies, plus indoor and outdoor versions of 4'33" for ensemble, recorded at Inverleith House in Edinburgh on DVD with bonus interviews.

Five world premiere recordings of orchestral works by Mexican composers Hilda Paredes, Ana Lara, Andrea Chamizo, Marcela Rodríguez and Georgina Derbez, with the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Scott Yoo.

Iris ter Schiphorst’s music combines political awareness with poetic power, sensual sonority and formal radicalism. In honour of her diverse oeuvre, the Zafraan Ensemble has released a selection of musical collaborations created for her anniversary on vinyl. A particular highlight is the recording of “Hyper-Dub” with Dirk von Lowtzow, frontman of the band Tocotronic, featuring his intense and timeless text about Berlin. Recorded at the Sendesaal Bremen, the Bonello Studios Berlin and the Nikolai…

The concert version of Einstein on the Beach by Ictus, Suzanne Vega, and Collegium Vocale Gent distills Philip Glass’s pioneering minimalism into a mesmerizing sound ritual. Stripped of Robert Wilson’s grand staging, Vega’s measured narration weaves through the ensemble’s crystalline precision, revealing the raw musical architecture of this modernist epic.

Tip! *300 copies limited edition* Robert Nasveld (born 1955) studied piano at the Utrecht Conservatory and specialized in the twentieth-century repertoire, with a particular focus on Dutch, Russian, and American music. He thoroughly immersed himself in the piano works of the American composer George Crumb with concerts in Europe, Russia, and the United States. As a composer he also studied electronic music with Ton Bruynèl and recorded a handful of tape pieces which are collected on this LP. The…

Three string works written between 2020 and 2023, performed by Ensemble Modern: a nonet locked in seven-eight, a piece that splits sound the way a prism splits light, and a score written in mirror notation. Ikeda's electronic precision, played on bowed strings.

2010 release ** "Two discs, 17 tracks per disc, just whistling, never remotely pyrotechnic, always with substantial breath in the tone, emerging from the very audible hum of the room, subsiding back into it. Slow, hints of melody but, fundamentally, the kind of things you'd whistle to yourself when deeply thinking of matters, perhaps not even realizing you're whistling. It's so personal, in a way, yet you don't (at least I don't) have any uncomfortable feeling of eavesdropping. Beuger is a fluti…

Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) is the first of four operas about the "American" consciousness. The tetralogy, including Foreign Experiences, eL/Aficionado and Now Eleanor's Idea, is based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. The operas share principal characters and vocal techniques (including the relationship of the voice to instrumental settings). The singers are used interchangeably as soloists and members of a chorus. The immediacy of choral respons…

Christian Wolff's complete works for bass, played by Robert Black under the composer's supervision: Look She Said, Jasper (with violin), String Bass Exercise out of Bandiera Rossa, Dark as a Dungeon (with trombone) and Untitled for electric bass-guitar.

“It is not enough just to play the right notes at the right time in the right way; one must also have the right consciousness. It places the performer in the role of explorer of the interior in order to produce, and being still in order to be active.” — Pauline Oliveros "These words, spoken by Pauline Oliveros, remind us of how fundamental an influence Alvin Lucier has had on the development of new music and its interpretation; they remind us of our role as explorers of sound, and of the irresis…

*2024 stock* bastille musique presents its twenty-third release »Iannis Xenakis: Eonta« featuring recordings by Ensemble Schwerpunkt, Lorenzo Soulès (piano), Edicson Ruiz (double bass), Dirk Rothbrust (percussion) und Peter Rundel (conductor). The album includes Iannis Xenakis’s music for brass from four decades, from Eonta (1963-1964) to Linaia-Agon (1972), Khal Perr (1983) and Mnamas Xapin Witoldowi Lutosławskiemu (1994), amongst others. In addition to the recordings produced by the WDR, it al…

2024 stock bastille musique presents its seventeenth release »Lucier & Bach: Sitting in a Room« featuring Hanna Herfurtner (soprano, voice), Clara Blessing (oboe), Joosten Ellée (violin), Linda Mantcheva (violoncello) and Elina Albach (harpsichord, organ). The album combines Alvin Lucier’s sound art piece I am sitting in a room with arias by Johann Sebastian Bach (from BWV 61, 1, 58, 199, 57, 36, 248, 68). Recorded in co-production with Deutschlandfunk, the set also includes a 48-page bilingual …

1990 release ** Luciano Berio: Ricorrenze Salvatore Sciarrino: Quintettino #2 Luca Francesconi: Attesa Ludovico Einaudi: Ai margini dell' aria Armando Gentilucci: Cile 1973 Giorgio Federico Ghedini: Quintetto #1 "The collection here draws together pieces from the "hard" wing of post-World War II composers. The Arnold Quintet plays all this music with flair, wit, and understanding. Berio is probably the best-known name on the disc, and I enjoyed his Ricorrenze ("Recurrence") more than the other p…

2005 release ** The works on this CD represent three different series of compositions, which I have been working on simultaneously in the last few years. Structurally, their individual parts resemble each other: all instruments play (rather) long sounds, each one followed by a pause.55 similar events plus two drummers drumming (1999) consists of two layers of events. On the one hand, seven instruments are organized ‘isophonically’ and with regular durations. Their sounds, each comprising the sam…

Xenakis Edition volume 13: works for soloist and ensemble by Iannis Xenakis, played by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble under Steven Schick, with the first recording of Zythos for trombone and six marimbas.

A new vision of John Cage, via his complete works for string quartet. Spanning forty years of the artist’s activities, these three masterworks illuminate the different stylistic periods in the output of this 20th century icon.

Samuel Reinhard returns to elsewhere music with “For 10 Musicians,” a four-part ensemble piece recorded in 2025 at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.

Giacinto Scelsi (1905–1988) is one of the most unusual composers of the twentieth century, a unique figure whose importance was only fully recognized and celebrated after his death. During his lifetime, he was often dismissed, especially in Italy, as a pretentious dilettante because he did not notate his music himself. Beginning in the mid-1950s, he recorded his improvisations at the piano and had them transcribed by others. In this way, in the course of only a few years hundreds of piano pieces…

*2025 stock* Famous for his examination of unusual and exotic instrumental sounds, here Mauricio Kagel focuses on the most mundane of sound materials. While attending a music trade show, Kagel was taken by the many levels and orbits of sound activity emanating from the various booths and stages. In 'Playback Play' (subtitled 'News from the Music Fair, A Radio Piece') he has arranged a spatially sensitive tableau of crowd noises, sales pitches and fragments of the sort one hears in music store sh…

Composer, alone by Jürg Frey (performed by Reinier van Houdt) is a luminous retrospective stretching across three discs and 35 years. Twelve solo piano pieces—fragile yet substantial—trace Frey's evolution, distilling time and silence into crystalline musical objects. Van Houdt’s touch brings warmth and clarity, illuminating the invisible architecture within Frey’s sensitive landscapes.

Philip Glass’s seminal 1982 album Glassworks remains one of the most influential and accessible works in contemporary classical and minimalist music, bridging the worlds of concert hall and popular listening with timeless elegance. Originally conceived as a “Walkman‑suitable” work, Glassworks was designed for intimate, personal listening on cassette, with a special headphone‑oriented mix that brought listeners deep inside Glass’s intricate, pulsing sound world. The album’s six short, vividly con…