Back in stock
Jetzt
In 1981/1982 the French composer Luc Ferrari produced the radio play “Jetzt – oder wahrscheinlich ist dies mein Alltag, in der Verwirrung der Orte und der Augenblicke” [“NOW – or Probably This Is My Everyday Life in the Confusion of Places and Moments”] with the Hessischer Rundfunk. Like other earlier radio plays of Ferrari, “JETZT” as “radio play on the radio play” is a special case between music, radiophonic art and narrative radio play. The dialogues between Luc Ferrari and his wife Brunhi…
Hesse Between Music (Dichtung & Musik)
*2024 stock* Produced in 1974 by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, this synthesis of Hermann Hesse’s writing with Peter Michael Hamel’s music, of spirituality and art, of sitar and church organ, of meditative sounds and jazz rhythms, of silence and passion remains unique today and in the meanwhile it has obtained a legendary reputation. Further releases of the formation Between from the 1970s are re-released as cds on the Intuition label: "Einstieg - Re-Entry", "And the Waters Opened", "Silence Beyond Time…
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 employing gestural sketches on tape to alter sounds produced by voices and instrumentalists. The two works on this 2015 Wergo release are representative of Subotnick's methods, using a trumpet with a chamber ensemble in After the Butterfly, to reali…
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, Winter Music, etc. Here, though, Cage generates indeterminacy by turning once again to using star charts as tools of composition, as he did previously in the wonderful Atlas Eclipticalis.
In a way, I find the piano to be more suited to star charts th…
Kurtág, Lutoslawski, Gubaidulina
1994 release ** "The Arditti Quartet here performs all three of Kurtag's string quartets, along with Lutoslawski's one quartet, and Gubaidulina's second as well -- the recordings are from 1990. Kurtag's quartets are some of the finest of the 20th century, clearly fusing Webern and Bartok. What distinguishes Arditti's Kurtag from the Keller Quartet on ECM? (see my review). The AQ takes the tempos slightly faster. Not too fast, in fact I'd say if anything the KQ has slowed them down for dramatic e…
Sonata XIII / Music For Marcel Duchamp / Song Books I-II / Empty Words III
*2022 stock* The first works of Cage are experimental and related to the future. "The Future of Music" - a Credo" is the title of his first manifesto, and this future bears the name "all-sound music".
Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 1
Featuring The Manhattan Percussion Ensemble, John Cage (conductor), Paul Price (conductor), Christoph Caskel (percussion), David Tudor (piano), Aloys Kontarsky (piano), Bernhard Kontarsky (celesta), MEV (Ala Bryant, Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum & Ivan Vandor), AMM (Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare, Christopher Hobbs, Eddie Prevost & Keith Rowe). "Wergo's Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series focuses on the extraordinary world of contemporary and avant-garde music that flou…
Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 5
"With Earle Brown -- A Life in Music -- Volume 5, Wergo has once again dug up treasures of contemporary music from the 1960s and 1970s. The 3-CD set not only contains one of the first recordings of Charles Ives's 'Concord Sonata by Aloys Kontarsky but is also a testimony to the virtuosity of Severino Gazzelloni who is, without doubt, one of the greatest flutists of the 20th century. In addition, it contains music from the group Sonic Arts Union with the four pioneers of electronic music: David B…
Sound Art at Het Apollohuis
*2022 stock* This amazing double CD Box presents excerpts from previously unpublished concert and performance recordings of important artists who appeared during the lifespan of Het Apollohuis - between 1980 and 1997, artists presented a panoply of exhibitions, installations, performances, and concerts, and engaged in lively debate on art theory, at Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Under the direction of founders Paul and Hélène Panhuysen, the building became an important center for…
Epitaph Für Aikichi Kuboyama / Sechs Studien
* 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."Studio Reihe” now continues withnow continues with works by Herbert Eimert: In view of recent events, especially in Japan, Herbert Eimert's piece “Epitaph für Aik…
Erwartung - Monodram, Op. 17
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”now continues with a work by Arnold Schönberg: The premiere of Schoenberg's first stage work "Erwartung (Monodram)" [Expectation (Monodrama)] Op. 17, composed i…
Actions
Recorded live at the Donaueschingen Music Festival on October 17, 1971, Actions features a truly mind-bending confluence of musicians of the avant-garde, in the broadest sense of the term. Don Cherry -- the brilliant American free jazz trumpeter -- had recently expatriated to Sweden and was finding his way not only among the emerging free-jazz scene of Europe but also within his own constantly expanding musical palette that had begun to incorporate elements of African rhythms, Turkish folk idiom…
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 usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are rather immediately intense and -- permanently present -- endeavor to maintain the level of continued 'peaks' up…
Sonatas & Interludes For Prepared Piano
*2022 stock* Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, a cycle of 20 short pieces for prepared piano (a piano modified by inserting nuts and bolts and other objects between the piano strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects) by American composer John Cage. Created in 1946–48 after the composer had been introduced to Indian visual and performing arts, the cycle was intended to represent the so-called permanent emotions—the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the comic,…
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 notation, performance art, technology and Zen Buddhism that is early, conventionally-notated music for percussion ensemble and keyboards is sometimes neglected. Or was until recently. In the last few years – with the advent of performances and recordings l…
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, Erik Satie, Jonathan Albert, Mao Tse Tung (as a child), Henry David Thoreau, Rrose Selavy, Thorstein Veblen, Buckminster Fuller, Brigham Young, and Robert Rauschenberg – who speak together, their dialogue comprised of literal quotations, freely ada…
Und so weiter / Music Promenade
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.In "Und so weiter pour piano électrique et bande magnétique", the piano and tape sounds become interwoven in a complex dialogue. "Music Promenade. Mixage originale“ – created in t…
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 present Morton Feldman's four-hour-long trio For Philip Guston, performed by the ensemble Breuer-Engler-Schrammel. Feldman disagreed with those who regarded his works since the 1970s as being too long. 'In music, it's very difficult to distinguish betw…
Solo: Observed
1989 release ** "Stefanie Schwedes began her artistic career in the 1980s with the Becker Lehnhoff music project. Sound installations were created using tape recordings and later digital sampling. The artist has developed this basic working method further and transferred it to the image. She explores human-nature relationships in photography, drawings, spatial and sound installations."
For Franz Kline · For Frank O'Hara · De Kooning · Piano Piece To Philip Guston
*2022 stock* Wergo presents Moton Feldman's compositions For Franz Kline · For Frank O'Hara · De Kooning · Piano Piece To Philip Guston. Performed by Ensemble Avantgarde.