The Wild Beasts - Landmark Recordings
*2022 stock* Morton Subotnick achieved fame in the field of electronic music with Silver Apples of the Moon and The Wild Bull, his best-known tape works of the late 1960s. Since then, he has been active combining electronics with other media, notably…
Heliogabalus Imperator / Works For Orchestra
*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. Knusse…
Alvin Lucier
Alvin Lucier (1931 – 2021) was one of the most influential American minimalists. Some call him "sound physician" as his compositions are often based on acoustic research settings. His pieces tend to turn inside-out the properties of space and instrum…
Nam June's Spirit Was Speaking To Me
A spellbinding tribute from one multi-faceted artist to another. New York-based artist Aki Onda (b. 1967) conjured a transduction to the Korean multi-media pioneer Nam June Paik (1932-2006).
For Philip Guston
*2022 stock* Performed by Julia Breuer (flutes), Matthias Engler (vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, tubular bells), Elmar Schrammel (piano, celesta). Recorded 2007. One of Feldman's classic long-term late works, written in 1984. Wergo is proud to pr…
Canti Del Capricorno
*2022 stock* Michiko Hirayama inspired Giacinto Scelsi to write his twenty-part cycle "Canti del Capricorno" between 1962 and 1972. To this day the Japanese singer (b. 1923) is a unique performer of this spiritual yet energy-filled work for solo voic…
Nothing Is Real ...
*2022 stock* The focus of the pieces by Alvin Lucier on this CD is on the phenomena of resonance – sympathetic vibration – in many variations. “Time and again I find myself having to pare away any musical gestures in a work in order to uncover the tr…
s/t
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, …
Earthing
"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 …
James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet
*2022 stock* This work began life as a radio play in 1982, a commission from and for Klaus Schöning and Cologne’s WDR. Working on the principles of collage, Cage brought together 15 unlikely characters – Narrator, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Vocoder…
Die Verwandlung des Zornes
*In process of stocking* The Zooming is implemented musically; it captures places on the globe that lie in a constantly narrowing field of view around the Kollegienkirche in Salzburg, the site of the piece's premiere. In the north and south, the lati…
Mantra
*2022 stock* 'Composed in 1970, Mantra, for two pianos and ring modulation, was one of the decisive turning points in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s career. The 70-minute piece not only signalled a break with the text-based intuitive works, relying heavily …
Works For Piano, Toy Piano & Prepared Piano · Vol. III
*2022 stock* It may come as a surprise but one of the leading creators of keyboard music in the twentieth century is a composer by the name of John Cage. Cage’s reputation is so deeply associated with the avantgarde, with chance music, graphic notati…
Etudes Australes
*2022 stock* 'Etudes Australes was composed specifically for Grete Sultan, so this album is among the definitive recordings. As an indeterminate piece for solo piano (okay, well, a "duet for two hands"), this sounds very similar to Music of Changes, …
Circles · Sequenza I · Sequenza III · Sequenza V
Wergo presents Luciano Berio's compositions Circles · Sequenza I · Sequenza III · Sequenza V.
Continuum / Zehn Stücke Für Bläserquintett / Artikulation / Glissandi / Etüden Für Orgel / Volumina
*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.
Silver Apples of the Moon / The Wild Bull
Silver Apples of the Moon' is without a doubt the best known work from influential composer and electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick. It was originally commissioned by Nonesuch records back in 1967, when electronic music was more of a series of …
Kontakte
Kontakte is a Stockhausen classic from 1959, for electronics, percussion and piano (played here by David Tudor). One of his "moment form" compositions, which "...lead up to no climax, nor do they have prepared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the us…
Volume 1: Electronic Works
*2022 stock* Although this might be labelled 'Volume 1', this large collection of Morton Subotnick's work (featuring three of his pieces - 'Touch', 'A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur' and 'Gestures') actually showcases some of his most recent compositions. …
I Like To Think Of Harriet Tubman
*2022 stock* 'A true Leninist would argue that art in a smoothly running socialist state would become redundant and disappear, though while waiting for such a perfect society to come about, we have an idea of what socialist literature, painting, scul…