Onsets
Ici-bas' (2009) for ensemble & electronic sound. Hyperion Ensemble with members of Talea and the Bergersen Quartet. Tim Hodgkinson, conductor. 'Ulaaraar' (2005) for bass clarinet & strings. Tim Hodgkinson, bass clarinet and conductor. Ioan Marius Lacraru, Cornelia Petroiu, violas. Theodor Iancu, Andrei Kivu, cellos. Ion and Ciprian Ghita, basses. Anon, small gong. 'Amhas/Nirriti' [2001) for ensemble & electronic sound. Hyperion Ensemble. Tim Hodgkinson, conductor. 'Jo-Ha-Kyu' (2000-2010) for str…
Visitazioni
Two works from different periods come together in this "case-book": Ora (1997/2001) and Visitazioni (2011/ 2013). Times ... ways ... experiences intersect. Ora is a single stream of sounds and silences of 120 minutes. It can be "healed" (replaced) according to the feel of the listener. Its division into sections - like the same graphic score - have this unique feature. Headphone listening at a low volume is absolutely privileged. Visitazioni, referring to similar principles but changing the ways…
Pneuma
Pneuma presents five distinctive pieces by British composer Martin Iddon, performed by specialist new music ensembles. The set includes “pneuma.sarx” for Trio Atem (flute, voice, cello), “pneuma.kharis” (flute, cello, voice), “Danaë” (solo piano, Catherine Laws), and two works for larger instrumentations. Iddon’s music occupies unique territory, weaving together sparse, breathy textures and sudden shifts in color and gesture, drawing frequent reference to medieval and early Renaissance models - …
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 …
Violin & Orchestra
Carolin Widmann’s widely acclaimed ECM recordings have traversed a broad arc of music – from Schubert to Xenakis. Here she turns her attention to one of the pivotal compositions of Morton Feldman. Violin and Orchestra, composed in 1979, marked a new direction, with an almost painterly attention to detail in slowly unfolding music. It is not a concerto in the strict sense of the term, not soloist with orchestral support. The violinist must move inside the glowing colour-field of sound. In t…
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 chord catalogue / Within fourths/Within fifths
2013 release **
"The Chord Catalogue is sort of a sister to Music for 88. It is also an examination of pianistic possibilities done with a focus so tight that obscuring any intrinsic aesthetic qualities in the execution seems to be the intention. (Also like Music for 88, Johnson recorded the piece for Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia imprint). Beginning with “The 78 Two-Note Chords” (the section titling further eliminates risk of artistic suggestion), the set of pieces exhausts its way th…
Lost in dreams - works for piano
2013 release **
"Lost In Dreams comprises six pieces - Traumverloren I Für Klavier (2010), unfurling for over 30 minutes, its duration suited to Houben's clarifying this soft insistence embedded within mere repetition; and five dedicatory pieces of much shorter duration, bearing the titles in memoriam - Mussorgsky, Enescu, Schumann, Liszt and Messiaen. These brief epitaths privilege the presence of silence as much as any of Houben's works, with a surprisingly spry turn in the Enescu piece, sound…
YZ3Z2Z1S2, a Five-Letter Sufi Word
"My second complete Sufi word -- or cycle -- consists of five contrasting letters -- or movements -- calling for various combinations of soloists [2, 3, 4, 5], instrumental ensemble [1, 3, 5], and real-time electronics [2, 4, 5]. It confidently extends a global poetic design made of a quest for meaning, a taste for extraordinary adventures, an interest in the perfume of mystical ecstasy, and the pleasure of carefully sculpting the time and shapes that make up writing." Jean-Luc Fafchamps i…
8 duos
Born in 1934, Christian Wolff is the last surviving member of the group of composers that also included Morton Feldman and Earle Brown, which gathered around John Cage in New York in the 1950s. Wolff's own music has remained faithful to that Cageian experimental tradition ever since, and the eight works for pairs of instrumentalists here show how, in the right hands, the varying degrees of freedom his works allow their interpreters can produce astonishingly beautiful results. The common denomina…
The People United Will Never Be Defeated
Frederic Rzewski’s work “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” is based on the Chilean protest song, “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!,” written by Sergio Ortega a few months before Pinochet’s military coup in September of 1973.Frederic Rzewski came to Europe as a young man, lived in Cologne and Rome, and created a sensation as an avant-garde pianist with his premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Klavierstück X”. He worked with the leading composers of the time and was himself a composer.…
Szenen, standbilder. works 1991 – 2009
German composer Michael Reudenbach's works and studies from 1991-2009 are presented in a six-panel digipack with a 22-page booklet of notes, images and photos
In the Beginning
David Rosenboom (b. 1947) is a composer/performer known as a pioneer in American experimental music. This series of eight works, created between 1978 and 1981 and presented on these discs in chronological order of their composition, demonstrates a remarkable extension of Rosenboom’s techniques from his …Plymouth Rock… series of 1969–71 using the harmonic and sub-harmonic series.
The In the Beginning series exemplifies the idea of model-building as a compositional process. A simple process is def…
Sirenes
Works from Volker Heyn, an outsider artist interested in acoustic process, tone gestures, friction, discontinuous movements
Die Sterne des Hungers
The Stars of Hunger, was composed in 2007. It is based on three poems by the Austrian poet Christine Lavant: “Im rueckgrat aufwaerts glimmt ein licht,” “So also geht erleuchtung vor,” “Zeig an mir die kräuter welche bestärken” and “Lösch aus mein gesicht und führe mich blind.” Rather than set the poems themselves to music, Lang used the text generation program Abulafia to produce from them a cut-up in the tradition of William S. Burroughs. The composition contains only fragments of the po…
Complete Piano Music Vol. 10 - Etcetera
“The interpreter is a very important person indeed in Cage’s piano music, and a top international expert like Steffen Schleiermacher is a must for a complete recording such as this one: he knows the nuts and bolts and all the fine nuances.”
Il lungo treno di Cage
* In Italian * L’arte contemporanea raccontata con lo sguardo di un’artista orientale che da anni studia la cultura occidentale, esplorando le sinergie tra arte e musica.L’autrice parte da Kandinsky e Schönberg, segue con passione le tracce di Duchamp, Cage e degli artisti di Fluxus, l’intreccio delle loro storie artistiche e personali. Giunge fino a Nam June Paik, padre della videoart.Con sguardo minimalista, in linea con i principi di Fluxus, disegna, attraverso gli incontri e le amicizie tra …
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
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 …
Psappha; Rebonds A & B; Okho pour trois djembés
This amazing CD contains some of the great works for solo percussion by the authorities in the field of contemporary music. The performances and recording quality are both superb! Clearly all care and effort went into the recording and text however, the dual layered dvd /cd is in PAL format, and will require said player or a media transfer to see the studio footage and interview with Xenikas. Considering we spend much time searching for the "right music" to add to our collection, this disc…