Umbrae
2016 release ** The four works on this CD, ranging in date from 2004 to 2014, form an integral part of Andrzej Kwiecinski’s creative development and at the same time demonstrate his particular affinity with music for strings. Umbrae (2004) for string quintet. Mural (2008-10) for string quintet. Luci nella noote V (2014) for four string quartet. Contregambilles (2014) for string quartet. After studying composition, musicology and Baroque singing (countertenor) in Warsaw, Kwiecinski moved in 2005 …
The ECM Recording
Marking the occasion of Steve Reich’s 80th birthday (hup, big man!), The ECM Recordings compiles three CDs of the venerable minimalist composer’s major works, which were consecutively released in 1978, 1980 and 1982, and continue to influence and inspire myriad forms of modern music. Named “our greatest living composer” (The New York Times), “America’s greatest living composer” (The Village Voice), and “…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker), Reich’s ardent, incisive wo…
Dirt Road
Dirt Road stands as a milestone in Linda Catlin Smith's catalogue - a single work expanding over an hour, composed in 2005 and commissioned for dance. Performed by Mira Benjamin (violin) and Simon Limbrick (percussion), the piece moves through fifteen loosely connected movements, each open to interpretation and marked by Smith’s trademark transparency. The violin floats above sparse percussion gestures - wood, metal, vibraphone, and bowls - sometimes in suspended dialogue, sometimes drifting acr…
Ordinary Objects and Other Distractions
In this episode, a number of short recordings of household objects and curious instruments become the core thematic material for a range of exquisitely conceived and realised pieces in which the recordings are shaped, stretched, tuned, combined and otherwise manipulated before being folded into a variety of musical structures with additional elements or parts added. Much use is made of rhythms derived from gravity – that is, dropping and bouncing - embedded into microtonal, poly-rhythmic and dee…
Crash
Crash was Robert Ashley's last opera. It premiered at the Whitney Biennial weeks after his death in 2014, and presented again in 2015 at Roulette, where this recording was made. Featuring the original cast: Gelsey Bell, Amirtha Kidambi, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, and Aliza Simons. Music Director: Tom Hamilton. "What I have appreciated most about previous reconceptions of Ashley's operas was the extent to which newcomers found fresh possibilities. Already in Crash, broadened horizons…
dialogues with environments
2013 releae **
"Three works for solo piano in a kind of homage to Cage's "4'33"", insofar as the room in which the recordings took place is accorded coequal prominence, at least as the stated intention of Lee. So one hears various rustles, coughs and whatnot while the beginning of the last track, "Piano Solo No. 5" (2011) sounds as though recorded in close proximity to a number of aging fluorescent bulbs. More to the point, the piano sound is noticeably different in the three spaces. The music i…
Vokal / Instrumental
2013 release **
"Sometimes, music reaches my desk which I genuinely feel is beyond my ken to write about--I simply don't have the necessary tools. This wonderful disc, in large part, is one such so I'll pretty much stick to just giving my impressions and make no real attempt to put the music into context. I do feel confident in saying that, though I haven't heard everything released from Wandelweiser, the music herein will pretty definitely not coincide with your impression of the label, and I …
11 Microexercises
2013 release **
"11 Micro-Exercises were invented by Christian Wolff in response to a commission from the Miniaturist Ensemble. For Wandelweiser Editions, other miniaturists perform these eleven pieces (plus two bonus pieces): Beat Keller and Reza Khot. Keller and Khot are two electric guitarists who pierce the ivory (sometimes tear it) and respect the principle of a musical art free from preconceptions. Nine seconds, twenty-two, one minute and thirteen, or eleven minutes and forty-seven… The le…
drei, 1-21
2013 release **
From the early 2000s, Stefan Thut began a series of scores named according to the number of performers, somewhat like Cage's later works. Ranging from one performer to seven, including the more indeterminate "some" and "many," each score is very open, completely undefined, with a few written indications (limited mainly to volume restrictions), plus a kind of guiding thread to follow (composed of letters, lines, etc.) during the performance, without any indication of duration, for…
Urs Peter Schneider . Klavier
2014 release **
"Peter Streiff’s music moves in historical webs, encompassing the connected worlds of allusion and individuality in a language that is at once direct and cryptic. This new disc of his piano music, performed by fellow composer Urs Peter Schneider, is a microcosm of Streiff’s creative trajectory. For ease of comprehension, I will use English versions of composition titles in this review. “Of Magic” (1970), the earliest material represented here, has a fair amount in common with the…
Kompositionen 1973-1986
2014 release **
"The structure of this 2-disc set is durationally symmetrical, four pieces lasting (more or less) 8, 60, 60 and 8 minutes. I've no idea how representative this sample is of Schneider's work (I think it's my first experience of it) but there seems to be at least something of a common thread int he way he uses quasi-repetition of forms (not in a minimalist sense) that, over time, result in something larger than the individual elements. "Zeitgehöft" (the title of a collection of poe…
songs and piano pieces
2014 release **
"Beethoven’s fifth symphony begins with that now-iconic but aphoristic “short-short-short-long” musical motive about which so much has beenwritten and said, a radical statement for string melody without harmonic accompaniment. On his 2008 composition “Song 2,” for bass flute, Wandelweiser composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos essentializes the very concept of a similarly constructed four-note phrase, presenting each gesture in isolation, long silences allowing for listener recont…
24 petits preludes pour la guitare
2013 release **
"True, there are 24 pieces contained on this disc, which range in duration from 2:00 to 3:45, but in part due to the large amount of silence in which the single notes are swathed and also because the composition are "of a piece", the recording reads almost as a continuous work. The preludes seem to consist of sets of two to five notes, generally, perhaps always, in a rising pattern and very often diminishing as they appear, purely struck, with incredible gentleness, so much so th…
keine fernen mehr
2010 release **
"Two discs, 17 tracks per disc, just whistling, never remotely pyrotechnic, always with substantial breath in the tone, emerging from the very audible hum of the room, subsiding back into it. Slow, hints of melody but, fundamentally, the kind of things you'd whistle to yourself when deeply thinking of matters, perhaps not even realizing you're whistling. It's so personal, in a way, yet you don't (at least I don't) have any uncomfortable feeling of eavesdropping. Beuger is a fluti…
piano piece
2010 release **
"Arrayed neatly, but in dislocated sequence, across clean white pages using a standard music notation software, the material of Tim Parkinson's piano pieces suggests anonymity. Traces of other musics may be suggested by some of the material, though the focus for the performer is on projecting the sounds without the clutter of imposed interpretative rhetoric. In so doing both composer and performer declare themselves and this beautiful music is revealed."
abregistrieren
2005 release **
“select a sound of one or three tones within the range of an octavedistribute the pitches between the keyboards (use each pitch only once)select 3 – 31 stops from principals, flutes and reeds and distribute them evenly between the keyboards (do not use mixtures)play the pitches and hold the keys down (e.g. with lead weights)push the stop very slowly until you hear a change – then stop the movement, listen for a while and pull another register in the same way for a long time, on…
blue/dense
2005 release **
this piece uses 17 tones in whole-numbered proportions to a virtual fundamental of G'' (25Hz).the piece is a kind of analysis of the overtone region from the fifth to seventh partials and the corresponding regions one and two octaves above (10th to 14th, 20th to 28th partials).the tones are played and recorded during the first three parts and played back as samples at specific times.as many as 28 tones may sound simultaneously.the flute sounds are amplified, which allows us to he…
cello piece
2006 release **
I like that which is the extremely refined sound of a note made by an instrument. I find the sound of a note to be a very extraordinary, elusive and indefinable experience. I like the sound of one note next to another, or at the same time as another. The decisions to be made, from all the myriad array of sounds of notes, from all the potential possibilites of how to present and experience these sounds, is what draws me into the process which results in the making of a piece. I wr…
Stimmen
2007 release **
voiceswhat is music made of?of voices.and what is a voice?a sequence of sounds and silences, with its own consistency.perfectly self-contained: each voice voicing a world.and what is a world?a proportion: a specific distribution of movement and repose.perfect repose, incessant movement.in between: the infinite plurality of possible worlds.writing voices means:to traverse this universe of possibilities, one voice at a time, that is: from world to world.to dwell in worlds, in spac…
Beuger.Cage
2004 release **
Few composers have the self-control seen here to allow the silence that surrounds all we do to be so present, to bring to the forefront that which is covered by all of our daily activities, only present when we let ourselves realize the stillness at the base of all action, all sound. The regular presence of notes in calme étendue (oboe) provides for the listener a feeling similar to that of a light on top of a lighthouse as it regularly turns in the night – a feeling of grounding…