Composition / Contemporary

Four revolutionary orchestral works from 1951-52 showcase Stockhausen's bold transition to large ensemble writing. Featuring Formel, innovative Schlagtrio, theatrical Spiel, and the composer-conducted Punkte, this collection captures his pioneering experiments with orchestral pointillism and percussive techniques.

*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…

*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…

*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…

*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…

*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…

*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 …

*2022 Stock.* In Freundschaft features Suzanne Stephens performing three solo works for clarinet and basset-horn (alto clarinet). In Freundschaft (a 3-layer polyphony arranged for a single soloist) is a popular recital work, and has been arranged for many different instruments. It was written as a clarinet solo for woodwind player Suzanne Stephens for her birthday and was first premiered by her in 1978, though a flute version was performed earlier during Stephens' actual birthday celebration. In…

*2022 Stock.* Musik Für Flöte features the artistry of Kathinka Pasveer on 2 CDs, performing solo works for flute, piccolo flute, and alto flute. In addition to the flute arrangements of Amour and In Freundschaft, it includes several solo arrangements of works from the Licht opera cycle. This set also notably includes the electro-acoustic version of Kathinkas Gesang, a piece performed with percussionists in the opera Samstag aus Licht, but here in a later version with electronic music created at…

*2022 Stock.* Unsichtbare Chöre features a tape piece made up of 16 layers of a cappella choir tracks, employing a variety of massed vocal approaches, including the use of percussive and whispered noises, joined by a couple brief, hypnotic multi-tracked clarinet sequences. This tape is used as a textural background layer in Act 1 of the opera Donnerstag aus Licht (the Stockhausen Edition No. 30). In Act 3 the same tape is reused, but with the channels reversed. Although some of this material can…

*2022 Stock.* Musik Für Klarinette, Bassklarinette Und Bassethorn is a collection of works for clarinet, bass clarinet, and basset-horn featuring the artistry of Suzanne Stephens (also previously featured on In Freundschaft (the Stockhausen Edition no. 27). This 3 CD set includes recordings from 1989 to 1994 of compositions spanning 1974 through 1994. Many of these works are derived or arranged from Licht (reduced for independent concert recital). 7 works are for solo basset-horn, with the remai…

*2022 Stock.* Aries - Klavierstück XIII contains two long works featuring Markus and Majella Stockhausen (in separate performances). Aries is essentially the Spring quadrant of Sirius (the Stockhausen Edition no. 26) with the electronic tape accompanied by only Markus Stockhausen's trumpet part (in effect a live electro-acoustic work). The other work is Majella Stockhausen's traversal of Klavierstück XIII, a solo piano work later adapted with vocal parts into Scene 1 from the opera Samstag Aus L…

*2022 Stock.* The magic of works by Stockhausen is their inherent possibility for new interpretations. There is a richness of expression hidden inside these works, which has to bloom in different instrumental and interpretational guises for it to realize its own charged splendor. There is no way you can exhaust this music’s inherent goldmine of musical and existential aspects through one version and one version alone. The version of “Oberlippentanz” which opens this CD is a reduced version of ap…

*2022 Stock.* Montag Aus Licht is the 5 CD, fully-staged version of the 3rd Licht opera, Montag aus Licht (Monday from Light). This massive work is comprised of 3 Acts and framed by 2 electro-acoustic installation pieces ("Begrüßung" and "Abschied"). In contrast to Samstag aus Licht (which was highly instrumental in nature), this opera is structured around mixed vocal combos and choir groups. The work features vocalist Nicholas Isherwood, pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the WDR Cologne Choir, the…

*2022 Stock.* Geburtsfest = Festival Of Birth presents the mixed choir layer of the entire first Act of the opera Montag aus Licht (with some embedded musique concrète elements). This a cappella version, the "Geburtsfest", allows the listener to experience a specific facet of the opera without the soloists. Waves of choral voices can be heard, layered in various renditions/atomizations of the Licht super-formula. - Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

*2022 Stock.* The Stockhausen Edition no. 38, Geburts-Arien / Mädchenprozession mostly contains excerpted highlight scenes from the 1st and 2nd Acts of the opera Montag aus Licht, with some additional arrangements for a cappella girls' choir and solo piano. The first 16 tracks are the two "Geburts-Arien" (Act 1, Scene 3, also found on The Stockhausen Edition no. 36b). Tracks 34-53 contain the "Mädchenprozession", "Befruchtung mit Klavierstück", and "Wiedergeburt" scenes from Act 2 (found on the …

*2022 Stock.* Stockhausen conducts Haydn and Mozart contains 3 concertos from the classical repertoire, featuring Stockhausen's primary soloists performing new cadenzas written by Stockhausen himself (between 1978 and 1985). Markus Stockhausen, Kathinka Pasveer and Suzanne Stephens are backed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Stockhausen), rec. 1985/86. Stockhausen's cadenzas are largely idiomatic, although sometimes approached with a more pensive "new music" perspective. - St…

*2022 Stock. Includes a 192-page booklet in English.* Dienstag Aus Licht is the complete staged 4th opera of the Licht cycle, Dienstag Aus Licht (Tuesday from Light). This opera has a prelude Greeting, followed by two Acts. The first is a new arrangement and recording of Der Jahreslauf (The Stockhausen Edition no. 29). Besides being newly-arranged for Stockhausen's 2nd generation electro-acoustic ensemble, this version also has additional opening and closing character sequences to put it in cont…

*2022 Stock. Includes a 128-page booklet.* Markus Trompete Stockhausen features Markus Stockhausen performing Licht-related chamber works highlighting trumpet, piccolo trumpet, and flugelhorn. This CD also includes tracks created for a newly-recorded television broadcast presentation of Examen (from Act 1 of Donnerstag aus Licht). - Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

*2022 Stock.* Solo includes new recordings of vintage-era variable-form solo chamber works involving shortwave radio or delay processing. A unique version of Solo (accompanied by excerpts from Hymnen Region 2) was previously recorded by trombonist Vinko Globokar for Deutsche-Grammaphon, but this is its first proper appearance on the Stockhausen label. Earlier electro-acoustic noise versions of Spiral can be found on The Stockhausen Edition no. 15. Both of these works feature an element of perfor…

*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…

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 …

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…

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 …

*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…

*2022 stock* 'Hans Werner Henze was, during his lifetime, probably the most-performed composer of western modern music, and his advanced yet sensuously traditional music remains an important presence on stages around the world today. Henze was deeply attached to Italy, where he spent a large part of his life. The roots of this album go back to a personal meeting between Henze and the Italian double bass virtuoso Daniele Roccato when Roccato was attempting to obtain Henze’s blessing for a theater…

Frederic Rzewski’s work “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” is based on the Chilean protest song, “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!,” written by Sergio Ortega a few months before Pinochet’s military coup in September of 1973.Frederic Rzewski came to Europe as a young man, lived in Cologne and Rome, and created a sensation as an avant-garde pianist with his premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Klavierstück X”. He worked with the leading composers of the time and was himself a composer.…

Yiran Zhao makes use not only of musical elements but also of objects, bodies, movements and light-sources as compositional material. Many of her pieces inhabit the various boundary states between instrumental music, performance, sound-installation, and video-art. Leonie Reineke describes the composer in the CD-booklet as a “prudent researcher“, who encounters the sonic cosmos of her environment with great earnestness, and comes microscopically close to things. In the composition “Piep“ she focu…

"String quartet” seems a rather reductive way of describing any of the four utterly compelling works by Clara Iannotta that the Jack Quartet play here. For as well as demanding that the string players employ every conventional technique, the Italian composer extends their sound world farther, both with electronics and with “found objects” applied to the strings and bodies of the instruments. The four pieces all date from the last seven years. The earliest, A Failed Entertainment, borrows the wor…

*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 form of theatrical composition. In the 1960s, his research led to the creation of a series of works that are difficult to classify: A floresta è jovem e cheja de vida (1966), Y entonces comprendió (1969-70), but especially La fabbrica illuminata from 1…

*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.

*2022 stock* The origins and technical content of Strahlen (‘Rays’), a work left incomplete at the time of Stockhausen’s death, are complicated. It’s best to watch the documentary about the work before hearing it through, so that your mind’s eye is tuned in to what is going on, and what lies behind the concept and techniques used in its realisation. Part of the genesis of Strahlen was a desire to create a ‘virtual vibraphone’ with the ability to play extended notes, dynamic crescendos and freaki…

First complete recording of Lou Harrison's reconstructed suites for just-intonation guitar and of the Ditone Set, played by John Schneider, with the first recording of Harrison's Handel homage for guitar and gamelan.

Morton Feldman's complete music for violin and piano, from Piece for Violin and Piano (1950) to For John Cage (1982), which spans both discs, played by Marc Sabat and Stephen Clarke.

Four works by Alvin Lucier played by the Italian ensemble Alter Ego: Two Circles, Fideliotrio and Three Translations of the Works of Maurizio Mochetti, plus a new recording of I Am Sitting in a Room with the composer.

Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2, a work of more than six hours, played by the FLUX Quartet on a deluxe five-CD box with liner notes by Christian Wolff and FLUX founder Tom Chiu.

First recordings of Roger Reynolds's recent string quartets FLiGHT (2012-16) and not forgotten (2007-10), by the JACK Quartet under the composer's supervision. First of two volumes marking his 85th birthday.

Since the mid-1960s, Jon Gibson has played a key role in the development of American avant-garde music. As a versatile reed player, he has performed with everyone from Steve Reich and Philip Glass to Terry Riley and La Monte Young. In the 1970s, Gibson would emerge as a minimalist composer in his own right and release two exceptional albums, Visitations and Two Solo Pieces, on Glass' Chatham Square imprint.Songs & Melodies brings together recordings from 1973 to 1977 (mostly previously unrelease…

Nitsch loved the countryside where he lived, the austrian „wine county“ – with this release he wanted to combine his music, his art and the landscape. Recorded on 28th August 2021, Nitsch Museum, MistelbachConductor: Michael MautnerPerformers: Members of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna (RSO Wien)Mix and Master by Christoph Amann, Vienna

Philip Corner was an active member of Fluxus, a founder of the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble, the resident musician and composer for the Judson Dance Theatre, and co-founder of Gamelan Son of Lion. The musical opportunities that these ensembles and their performances offered Corner ensured that he was both prolific and had or developed a deep understanding of the important artistic influences of that time. Corner uses a variety of scoring methods. He is truly the equal of John Cage in forcing us t…