For Philip Guston
Originally released in 2000. Looking for just one Morton Feldman CD to give to someone that you like more than yourself? There's more than one correct answer to this elusive question, but this overwhelming set (closing in on 300 total minutes) is an utter classic, with paralyzing sonic power. Feldman is recognized as one of the 20th century's most influential composers. Feldman's artistic principles were shaped in the early 1950s by his association with composers John Cage, Earle Brown and…
Indra's Net
A hybrid acoustic tape piece of solo violin on four track tape, and a work for four violins, composed in 1974 by Harley Gaber
Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 2
3-CD Set. Recorded between 1960 and 1973, the original eighteen LPs that comprise Earle Brown's legendary Contemporary Sound Series have been highly sought after in the secondary market since 1978 when they were discontinued. These rare and historically important recordings of international avant-garde music have been carefully digitized and remastered by the Earle Brown Music Foundation. Volume two includes music by Nono (Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica), Bruno Maderna (Serenata No. 2), Luciano Ber…
In Corpore Vili
Just arrived, this is the newest edition RZ release focused on a radical electronic (+ Ensemble) music by Clara Maida "During the first years of my compositional research, my goal was to mark out, in my music, the flux of the psychic energy at work in the unconscious and its underlying structure. At the time, I was going through an analytical process favouring access to this unconscious activity, and my readings in the field of psychoanalysis were helping me in the effort to elaborate a musical …
Rational Melodies
I am particularly pleased, because the result is so different from the solo flute recording of Eberhard Blum and the solo clarinet recording of Roger Heaton. It is not just another interpretation, but a case where interpreters have added so much insight to the music that the music itself has grown. When I was composing this music around 1982, I really thought I was simply writing melodies, but now these little pieces, though remaining melodies, have become something much more, something I…
Mondweiß
Recordings from the Elektronic Studio at the TU Berlin, the Studio of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, and at Patrick Kosk's own studio
Works for Instruments
Edition RZ presents John McGuire's Works For Instruments. Performers: Ensemble Modern -- Julia Rempe (soprano); Pellegrini-Quartett: Antonio Pellegrini, Thomas Hofer (violin); Fabio Marano (viola); Helmut Menzler (violoncello); musikFabrik: Hermann Kretzschmar, Paulo Alvarez, Irmela Roelcke, Eun-Ju Kim, Ulrich Löffler, Jürgen Kruse (piano), Christine Chapman, Jodie Lawson, Charles Putnam, Rohan Richards (horns), Dirk Rothbrust, Carlos Tarcha (percussion). Each of the compositions of post-minimal…
Chromatophore
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Anthony Pateras is a composer/performer based in Melbourne who is as comfortable writing for full orchestra as he is performing in intimate improvisational groupings. Pateras represents the best in the new generation of musicians combining the spontaneity of improvisation with the formal logic of composition and for his second Tzadik CD, he has chosen an eclectic mix of ensemble pieces that blend instrumental virtuosity and electroacoustic sonorities in star…
The works of double bass
This disc contains the first complete recordings of Giacinto Scelsi's music for double bass. Volume 7 in Mode's acclaimed Scelsi Edition. Scelsi's infamous 'KO-THA I, II, Ill' -- for string instrument played lying on its back in a percussive manner -- is presented for the first time in an adaptation from the original for guitar by legendary bassist Fernando Grillo. Robert Black, internationally known as one of the leading bassists of our time, has also collaborated or performed with a diverse nu…
Gongs and Bamboo
*2022 stock.* The first release outside Japan of music by one of the the most original and underappreciated composers in contemporary music. Born 1900 in the Phillipines, Maceda has been creating remarkable compositions, often for large ensembles of the same instrument for fifty years. This CD brings together three very different pieces from his enormous catalog. The hypnotic Suling-Suling is scored for an ensemble of forty bamboo flutes, Colors Without Rhythm is one of his most dynamic orchestr…
Lohengrin
2008 release ** Lohengrin, Salvatore Sciarrino's "azione invisibile", is both a gloss on Wagner's opera and a sly debunking of it. It was conceived by its composer as an opera with action invisible, for one singer/actress who assumes all the charactersn Sciarrino's monodrama, based on one of Jules Laforgue's Moralités Légendaires, episodes from the story are viewed through the distinctly jaundiced eyes and ears of Elsa, the woman Lohengrin marries and then deserts. A single voice narrates and ta…
Music For Keyboard 1935-1948 / The Early Years
This double-CD set combines two of the key titles of Columbia Records's
legendary "Music of Our Time" series curated by David Behrman. Jeanne
Kirstein's recording of Cage's early keyboard works remains a touchstone
of Cagean interpretation notwithstanding the passage of time. Christian
Wolff recalls, "I remember Cage saying that Jeanne Kirstein's playing
caught the spirit in which the pieces were written at the time he wrote
them-a kind of simple excitement and enthusiasm (also, surely, ou…
Earle Brown: Selected Works 1952- 1965
This long-awaited reissue of the CRI recording of Earle Brown’s (1926–2002) music is the best overview of his seminal early works. “It is obviously a great pleasure for me that Cri is re-releasing its 1974 recording of my work, and an even greater pleasure that I am able to add to the repertoire. The performance of Times Five and Novara still seem very fine representations of the works and are performed brilliantly by the Dutch musicians. December 1952 as realized by the late, brilliant pianist …
Philomel
Compositions performed by Bethany Beardslee and Lynne Weber (sopranos), Jerry Kudern and Robert Miller (pianos). The four works on this recording span a period of a decade and are among the best of Milton Babbitt’s output, tape and otherwise. Philomel, for soprano, recorded soprano, and synthesized sound, is one of the undisputed classics of electroacoustic music and this is its definitive recording. Two versions of Phonemena —one for soprano and piano, the other for soprano and tape— another vi…
The Winds Rise in The North
Composer Harley Gaber wrote this piece for strings as an emotional examination of the questions posed by Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu, here performed by a quintet including violinist Malcolm Goldstein
An Hour For Piano
"First, the booklet notes. If you pine for Gertrude Stein speaking circles around herself, meaning what she doesn’t mean, and not meaning what she means, you’ll probably like Tom Johnson’s non-sort-of-explanation of his magnum keyboard opus, An Hour For Piano. The composer prefers that you don’t read his notes while listening to the music. In fact, don’t read them before you play the CD for the first time. Listen to the piece first. Then, if you’re feeling artsy, put on the CD again and read the…
Dust
Dust is an opera by Robert Ashley and Yukihiro Yoshihara (video direction) whose imaginary setting is a street corner anywhere in the world, where those who live on the fringes of society gather to talk, to each other and to themselves, about life-changing events, missed opportunities, memory, loss, and regret. Five "street people" recount the memories and experiences of one of their group, a man who has lost his legs in some unnamed war. As part of the experience of losing his legs, he began a …
Extreme Positions
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…
Yomillak - Korean classical music
Selection of Korean classical music, performed by the Orchestra National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Cast your mind back to the 15th century. That is, of course, difficult if not impossible to do, but the major piece recorded on these CDs, Yomillak, 'Giving the People Joy', provides something of a sonic reference point: it was first performed in 1447. Y'millak is the most extended piece of orchestral court music surviving in Korea, and it has for many centuries been used for r…
Morton Feldman
Beautiful collection of Morton Feldman's earliest, shorter piano works from the early 50s, going through the late 70s