Harlekin / Der Kleine Harlekin
*2022 Stock.* Harlekin / Der Kleine Harlekin features the clarinet and dance of woodwind player Suzanne Stephens. These two pieces for soloist are each based on a single formula theme, but with elements and limbs of the theme expanded and transformed at length in different textural explorations. An over-arching narrative theme enfolds the works in a dramatic scenario. Harlekin is a work for a costumed solo clarinetist with a substantial element of performer movement in its score (dance and mime …
Atmen Gibt Das Leben
*2022 Stock.* Atmen Gibt Das Leben is a semi-theatrical choral work, with the second half accompanied by orchestral background textures. The melodic vocal elements here have a somewhat humorous, folk-like feel to them. Atmen Gibt Das Leben (Breathing Gives Life) is essentially written for a capella mixed choir, but Stockhausen also includes a somewhat secondary orchestra part (usually played as a tape accompaniment) which is used to color the unaccompanied choir. There are 2 sections to this wor…
Inori
*2022 Stock.* Inori is a large scale work for orchestra which portrays the formation of a theme, one parameter at a time (rhythm - dynamics - melody - harmony - polyphony). Essentially, slow-moving sound masses in the beginning evolve into dramatic, complex gestures by the end. Two dancer-mimes are listed as soloists, but obviously they can't be heard on the CD. Inori is a further development of the formula concept Stockhausen first began exploring in Mantra,and would eventually be fully explore…
YLEM
*2022 Stock.* The Stockhausen Edition 21st CD features 2 performances of the open-form work YLEM, which musically portrays the birth and death of the universe through the progressive motion of handheld instruments through a performance space (or in this case, the stereo field). The word "ylem" ("eye - lum") comes from a 1940's science term for "matter", specifically the sub-atomic plasma initially created at the Big Bang which continues to spread outwards forming the boundaries of the universe. …
"Am Himmel Wandere Ich..."
*2022 Stock.* "Am Himmel Wandere Ich..."documents a cycle of 12 mystical male-female vocal duets based on traditional American Indian song texts. Am Himmel Wandre Ich's text-influenced melodies could possibly be viewed as Stockhausen's version of the madrigal tradition, mixed with ancient ritual and a glorification of nature (I suppose the fact that they are typically performed between a man and a woman makes them come across as love songs as well). The idea of having almost innumerable possibl…
Trans
*2022 Stock.* The Stockhausen Edition No.19 contains two recordings of the enigmatic orchestral work Trans, which highlights sometimes comic soloists playing against a backdrop of percolating winds and slowly-modulating strings. The imagery and general sonic characteristics of Trans came to Stockhausen in a dream he had in 1970. The result was an orchestral work where the most active members of the orchestra are hidden from view, and a slow-moving wall of string players hosts several comically b…
Sternklang
*2022 Stock.* Sternklang features a roaming studio recording, documenting the five spacially-separated electro-acoustic chamber groups of Sternklang, a harmonically-modulating piece structurally similar to the all-vocal Stimmung. Some soloists are also highlighted in the mix as they migrate from one group to another. This 2 CD recording features members of the English new music groups Intermodulation and Gentle Fire, as well as Annette Meriweather (vox), Harald Bojé (synth), Michael Vetter (vox,…
Stimmung – Pariser Version 1968 In Zwei Aufnahmen Von 1969 Und 1982
*2022 Stock. Includes 124-page booklet in German and English.* “Stimmung” was a commission from the City of Cologne, for an ensemble at the Rheinische Musikschule; Collegium Vocale Köln. It was written early 1968, in February and March, in a house on Long Island Sound in Madison, Connecticut, where Stockhausen and his wife Mary Bauermeister and their children lived a couple of months. This commission for a vocal work took on a completely new direction when Stockhausen – out of consideration for …
Gruppen / Carré
*2022 Stock. Includes 32-page booklet in German and English.* On volume no. 5 in the ongoing Stockhausen Edition we meet large-scale orchestral works for the first time in the series. The first piece on this CD originates in a commission that Stockhausen received from the WDR, but nobody – perhaps not even Stockhausen – could foresee the kind of music that would eventually come out of this commission. The end result was no less than revolutionary, in its totally new concept of music moving in sp…
Kontra-Punkte / Zeitmaße / Stop / Adieu
*2022 Stock.* The best, most efficient way to hear Stockhausen's works is through his official record label and publishing house. The Stockhausen Edition CDs are meticulously assembled with often voluminous booklets in English and German, filled with sketches and other documentary artifacts. Almost all of the recordings originally released on Deutsche Grammophon, Wergo, Nonesuch and other labels were reacquired by Stockhausen, and then remastered and repackaged under the Stockhausen Edition cata…
Formel / Schlagtrio / Spiel / Punkte
*2022 Stock.* Starting off with a merry, but very cautious fairytale melody, the little figures trip down a spiral staircase, then move in sudden rash movements across the stage, hide behind a tree or a rock, stick their heads out in a peek-a-boo-manner, look cautiously around with big apprehensive eyes, then dart forth again, to the next hiding spot – until they feel more at ease, and expose themselves center stage, holding hands or arms, dancing around, still looking and listening, in the spot…
Chöre Für Doris - Choral - Drei Lieder - Sonatine - Kreuzspiel
*2022 Stock. Includes a 32-page booklet in German and English.* This first volume of the Complete Edition highlights voice-driven student works and two chamber works. Kreuzspiel (Crossplay) is probably Stockhausen's first "key work". Although these works were composed in the early 1950s, these premier recordings are comprised of performances from the 1970s. Listening to the first works being issued in the large-scale the Stockhausen Edition series, one might expect some give-aways as to a possib…
Hibiki Hana-Ma / Mycenae Alpha / Polytope De Cluny
*Restocked, reduced price* "Hibiki Hana-Ma" was created in 1969 for the Steel Pavilion of the Japan Iron and Steel Federation at the Expo 1970 in Osaka as musical part of a multimedia show. Even though the work does not bear the designation in its title, it can be already regarded as a Polytope: it was created for a specific architectural location, lasers and mirrors have been installed: a light choreography by the Japanese artist Keiji Usami accompanied the spectacle. This concept of synchroniz…
Diamanda Galás
Long out of print, Diamanda Galás' incendiary 1984-released second album is available once more, remastered by Brooklyn's Heba Kadry
Monochromes
*In process of stocking* “Tolimieri makes a universe of micro-nuance audible, with each piece consisting of hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of points of contact. Each point is just a little different from its predecessor. One by one, the points carry the music outwards, until the sound canvas is radiantly filled with the sensation of a particular touch.
The succession of Monochromes on these discs has a beautiful logic. I hear it as an attempt to “begin again”, to rediscover the pi…
drift nowhere past / the adventure of sleep
Rotterdam-based composer/pianist Reinier van Houdt created six pieces from March 22 to August 22, 2020 for a monthly 'quarantine' series of the online festival AMPLIFY 2020: quarantine, commissioned by Jon Abbey. Each of the six pieces on 'drift nowhere past' was recorded on the 22nd of each month (#18, #75, #128, #155, #194, #211). "I've made these pieces from what I played, listened to, recorded, played back, read, watched, heard, or imagined, each during one specific day in the quarantine of …
La Tempesta Colorata
Paradigm-shifting percussionist Valentina Magaletti stops time on 'La Tempesta Colorata', a long-form set that rolls thru tempos and time signatures with gymnastic flexibility, offering another spectacular entry to A Colourful Storm’s gravity-defying recent run of releases.
Magaletti is a regular and constant presence on these pages as a member of Moin, Vanishing Twin, Tomaga and CZN, as well as thru endless collabs with everyone from Floating Points to Nicolas Jaar, Jandek to Helm. For our mo…
Ocean
*Restored and remastered from the original tapes* "My task is to allow the listener to penetrate deeper into the music. The music is wholly improvisational. It has no concept in the rational sense of the word. It’s concept is purely intuitive. It presumes The Law of Analogies: “As above so below. Man is the same as the Universe. The Universe is the same as Man.” ("Emerald Tablet” by Hermes Trismegistus"). This intuition is a kind of rephrased logic which uses many more symbols which contain not …
Trio IX / Exercises
The American composer Christian Wolff (b. 1934) is the last living representative of the New York School (Rauschenberg, Rothko, etc.). Wolff was not even an adult when he studied with Grete Sultan and John Cage. Wolff’s music was much more politically motivated than that of Feldman and Cage, which is evident on this new Wergo album by Trio Accanto. The album features first recordings made in close collaboration with Wolff in the studios of Deutschlandfunk Cologne/Germany. Wolff's great “Trio IX …
Halleluja / Alle Vittime Senza Nome
*2022 stock* 'Halleluja, Peter Eötvös’s “stuttering oratorio”, with a text by the novelist Péter Esterházy, was first performed in 2016. It’s built around the historical figure of Notker Balbulus, Notker the Stammerer, a ninth-century Benedictine monk who was a chronicler and composer. But, Eötvös insists, “It is not so much a portrait of Notker as of the times in which we live … At first the choir represents a society that says ‘hallelujah’ to everything: they have to be satisfied with everythi…