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Music in 2 Dimensions – Works for Flute
In honor of the 40th anniversary of great composer/ conductor Bruno Maderna’s (1920-73) death, Mode is pleased to release the first complete CD of Maderna’s music for flute. The flute played an important part in Maderna’s oeuvre due to his friendship with the exceptional flutist Severino Gazzelloni, who had premiered almost all of the flute compositions. Musica su due dimensioni is among the earliest examples to make live music interact with electro-acoustic sounds recorded on tape. There …
The Piano Works 9
'Haiku' (1950-51), 'Sixteen Dances' (1950-51), 'Alternate versions for piano & percussion'. Jovita Zhl, piano. Thomas Meixner, percussion. 'It is rare to discover a previously unknown work by John Cage today. So, what are the chances to discover two major piano pieces from the same period of 1950-51? Thanks to the dedicated work of Don Gillespie (who was Cage's contact at his publisher, C. F. Peters Corp.) and composer Walter Zimmermann, we have the two works recorded here. Both works were disco…
Variations V
This is the first commerical release of John Cage’s Variations V, from the legendary studio production made by NDR German Television, Hamburg, in 1967. It marks an early pinnacle in recorded Cage/Cunningham collaborations, and is one of the few available films of a Cunningham Dance Company performance from the 1960s. With music for an orchestra of electronic soundproducers by John Cage performed by Cage with David Tudor and Gordon Mumma to choreography by Merce Cunningham performed by Cun…
Afterglow
** 2021 Stock ** Keeril Makan composes without assumed expectations of an instrument’s sound or a performer’s capabilities, but by exploring the possible, by discovering the beautiful in the unexpected and following where that beauty leads. Makan’s relationship to the world of sounds has its connection to the work of Edgard Varèse and John Cage and by a broad American experimental tradition, with touchstones in the work of some of the European modernists. Afterglow is the outcome of hours spent…
Clouds and Sky
Clouds and sky (2010), for piano and orchestra. Jan-Philip Schulze, piano. WDR Sinfonie-Orchester. Peter Rundel. 'rota' (2008) for contrabass-clarinet & string quartet. Gareth Davis, contrabass clarinet. The JACK Quartet. 'red and blue' (1999) for percussion sextet. Ensemble S. 'a self-same song' (2010) for contrabass-clarinet solo. Gareth Davis, contrabass-clarinet. Johannes Schöllhorn (b.1962), is a student of Ferneyhough, Huber and Nunes, and is among Germany's leading younger generat…
The Works for Organ
This release is the first complete recording of all of Cage's works for organ, plus 4'33' (on the DVD version only). Gary Verkade, organ of Gammelstad Church, Sweden. 'Some of 'The Harmony of Maine' (Supply Belcher)' (1976). 'Souvenir' (1984). 'ASLSP' (1985). 'Organ2ASLSP' (1987). Bonus Track on DVD only: 4'33' (1952). The organ is ideally suited to Cage's aesthetic - its multitude of stops make it the ultimate 'prepared' instrument. The fact that sound emanates from a number of pipes placed at …
En Regardent Passer le Temps
* 2021 Stock. Edition of 300 * Based in Nice, Carpe Diem was a French '70s progressive outfit that also incorporated influences from jazz and classical music into its songwriting. Here's a fine vinyl-reissue of the band's debut-LP, originally dating back to 1976. The success of this album brought the group dates with other major French bands like Magma and Ange.
Zwei Gefühle and Solo Works
Violin and viola players whisper over their instruments. A guitarist waits with the closest attention for the moment to make a gesture we might easily have missed. The tuba player rises to go over to the open piano, there to send sounds echoing into its interior. Two cellists, bowing with heavy pressure down near the tailpiece, produce an urgent rasping. From the timpanist comes the sudden fortissimo that seems to shock the music to a standstill… Renowned German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s mus…
The Works for Percussion 2
John Cage’s vision of the future of music was first shaped by an intense creative period from 1935-1942, when he wrote many of the seminal works of percussion chamber music featured here. When he composed these works, the young Cage was basically the same age as the members of Third Coast Percussion. This release includes all three of the groundbreaking Constructions. First Construction (in Metal) utilizes dozens of metal instruments which are beaten, scraped and shaken, creating an other world…
Save Percussion Theatre
Aiyun Huang’s unique recital, “Save Percussion Theater,” is a video-recording of theater music for percussion dedicated to the pioneering work of the Parisian group “Trio Le Cercle,” for whom many of these works written and by whom they have been championed. This recording, in essence a document of the complete percussion works from the French school of theater music, is an ambitious undertaking. Here the camera replaces the eye of an audience member, and the microphone his or her ear, yet wit…
Songbirdsongs
Songbirdsongs is among John Luther Adams’ seminal works. This is the first time the cycle appears on CD. Although music has been written involving the sounds of birds for centuries, no composer has ever approached the concept in this way. Based on Adams’ observations and studies of actual bird songs, he scored them for various ensembles of piccolos, ocarinas, flutes and percussion. Rather than having a fixed score, each piece consists of a collection of unordered phrases for each instrument. T…
The Number Pieces 6
New York based ensemble Essential Music had a strong relationship with John Cage in his later years. This experience gives these recordings a special authority. Recorded in 1993-94, they are being released for the first time. In 1987 John Cage began writing his “number” and “time-bracket” compositions, which became his primary compositional method for the remainder of his life. These works are named for the number of musicians participating, consist of the number of parts with no com…
Electronic Works 3
Until Spring was first conceived in 1975 on the Buchla synthesizer using only analog techniques. “It was about 10 years from Silver Apples to Until Spring,” Subotnick explains, “and I’d evolved a whole concept and a technique, but I had gone as far as I could go with it. I could do everything I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it in real time.” As computers and software developed in the coming decades, Morton Subotnick created a software-based instrument that he felt could allow him to compl…
In the Shadows of No Towers (Art Spiegelman)
On 9/11, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (creator of “Maus”) was in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero, fleeing the crumbling World Trade Center with his family. He wrote In the Shadow of No Towers to illustrate the first-hand horror of that day, and the grief and disillusionment which followed. Inspired by Spiegelman’s book, guitarist/composer Marco Cappelli transforms it into a multi-media production. Actor John Turturro, a quintessential New Yorker, narrates the English v…
Sanctuary
Roger Reynolds’ Sanctuary for percussion ensemble is conceived to be both visually and sonically dramatic. Composed for a spatially distributed ensemble and live electronics, the work makes spectacular use of DVD’s surround sound capabilities. Sanctuary is a malleable work intended to evolve with the experience of its creators (composer, performers, and technicians) and conceived so as to adapt to, and capitalize upon, the changing resources and contexts within which it is realized. Sanctuar…
The Works for Percussion I
John Cage’s percussion works are among his most historically important. After 42 Volumes in Mode’s Cage Edition, Mode is releasing the first volume dedicated to his percussion music. Percussion Group Cincinnati is particularly respected for its knowledge of and experience with the entire range of John Cage’s music, having made tours and festival appearances with him on a number of occasions in Europe and in America, and having had pieces created by Cage especially for the Group. Volume 1 cons…
Madame De Shanghai - Après Presque Rien - Visage 2
This is Luc Ferrari’s second disc for Mode and it features three pieces from different periods and for different ensembles, two of which are first recordings. “Visage 2” is for brass and percussion and was written in 1955-56. This is an early work for Ferrari and it is informed by his study of serialism at Darmstadt, yet is based on the confrontation between two sexual bodies (note the lovely nude woman on the cover with Ferrari as he looks over his composition on the page). The music itself is …
The Piano Works 4
“Hispania “Triptyque pour piano” (1939). Suite No. 5 “Il Circo” (1935). Suite No. 6 “I Capricci di Ty” (1939). Stephen Clarke, piano. Mode’s Scelsi Edition continues with the fourth volume devoted to his piano works — three first recordings of major, large scale works from his early period of the 1930s. The piano plays a role of undeniable importance in Scelsi’s life and work. From 1930 to 1941, and again from 1952 to 1956, the composer produced an enormous repertoire for the instrument, includi…
Works With Flutes
The release of this CD celebrates Aldo Clementi’s 75th birthday in 2010. Clementi is one of the remaining living composers of the Italian avant-garde generation, which included Berio, Nono and Maderna. Clementi’s works for flute (including works for multiple flutes and flute with tape) are performed by one of his long-time collaborators, Roberto Fabbriciani – some of these works were written for or dedicated to him. Many of these works utilize Clementi’s signature explorations of the canno…
The Works For Saxophone 3 & 4
Ulrich Krieger completes his A Cage of Saxophones survey of Cage’s works composed for, or which can be played on any instrument or instruments. For this volume, Krieger combines works specifically composed for saxophone with works of no specified instrumentation that are suited for saxophones and winds. Most of these are “indeterminate”works, which require the performer to create the realization based on materials supplied by Cage. In some situations, Krieger used Cage’s compositional “tools” …