Puzzle
"Produced by Centre international de recherche musicale, Nice, France. Project involving 22 instrumentists featuring Pierre-Yves Artaud (flutes), Alexandre Ouzounoff (bassoon), Daniel Kientzy (saxophone), Vinko Globokar (trombone), Elisabeth Chojnacka (harpsichord). Puzzle 1999 (14-17) commissioned by INA-GRM." (Discogs)"An extension of the 'virtual orchestra' in which composer Pascal composes music out of gathered individual instrumental tones and lines (with the musicians never having met …
Michael von Biel
An astonishing CD with the usual RZ deluxe touch by the well-known fluxus related cellist. Michael von Biel (born 30 June 1939 in Hamburg) a German composer, cellist, and graphic artist. Von Biel studied piano, theory, and composition in Toronto (1956–57), Vienna (1958–60), New York (1960, with Morton Feldman, amongst others), London (1960, with Cornelius Cardew), and Cologne (with Karlheinz Stockhausen). From 1961 to 1963 he attended the Darmstadt Vacation Courses for New Music. In 1964 he rec…
Transición II. Phonophonie
This disc collects two early, forward looking works by Argentine born Mauricio Kagel, now living in Germany. Both works are constructed in such a way so that no two performances can ever be alike. Transición II was an early exploration of what "live electronics" are now being used to achieve. The score is in individual pages which can be placed in any order by the performers. It works on three levels. LIVE: The pianist performs on the keyboard while a percussionist performs inside the pian…
Morendo
1990 release. Six compositions by the German composer Mathias Spahlinger: ("Morendo" for orchestra), ("Yon Hier" for string quartet), ("Vier Stücke"), ("Entlöschend"), ("Storung" -- electronic music), ("Sotto Voce" -- choral work).Mathias Spahlinger is a composer. His compositions play out in the area of tension encompassing the most diverse musical influences and style directions: Spahlinger’s works portray conflicts for which there are no defined models as such, between Renaissance and jazz…
Celestial Fires
The works of Mary Jane Leach explore the physicality of sound, working very carefully with the timbres of instruments, creating combination, difference, and interference tones. Space is also an important concern: how sound changes when it is moved around a room. Celestial Fires features the New York Treble Singers, (Virginia Davidson, conductor) performing four 8-part pieces for a capella women's voices; Shannon Peet performing Feu de Joie for 7 bassoons; and Barbara Held and Ms. Leach performin…
Cartridge Music, Cifre, Four Systems
Works performed and arranged by Italian composer and Nuova Consonanza member Mario Bertoncini in 1970. Includes pieces by Cage ("Cartridge Music" for amplified "small sounds"), Earl Brown ("Four Systems" for prepared piano), and Bertoncini ("Cifre" for two or more pianos).
20 Jahre Inventionen V - live electronic
The live electronics that Nono worked with for the first time in the early 1980?s at the Freiburg Experimental Studio also serves the musical displacement: the music moves away from clear spatial and timbral assignations. Due to electronic processing, the sonic characteristics of both instruments, bass flute and cello, can hardly be recognized. Tones and gestures are lengthened into seeming infinity and move in space
A Carlo Scarpa · A Pierre · Guai Ai Gelidi Mostri
** Original 1990 edition LP, comes with a black and white 12-page booklet ** Edition RZ’s vinyl edition of three works by Luigi Nono - a pivotal figure of the Italian avant-garde - all composed and recorded in the mid ‘80s. A lesson in fine-tuning acoustic perceptions, meant for focussed reception in keeping with Nono’s concept of “new listenings”: "This no longer means revolutionizing the entire linguistic system ie. a subversive attack on the institution of music; rather it means progressively…
Didascalies
The idea of bringing together Rencontres fortuites, Didascalies and Tautologos III - two recent works for piano, viola and electronics, and one open-ended work - imposed itself at a concert at the Boendael Chapel in Brussels, where Collard-Neven and Royer performed Didascalies, with Ferrari attending. A few months later, we found ourselves in the legendary Brème studios, having to deal with the waiting, the Tonmeister's mood swings, and Luc, sick, having a hard time with long commutes and schedu…
Interrupteur/Tautologos 3
Luc Ferrari -- along with Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, François Bayle, and others -- is one of the pioneers of the particular style of tape music known as 'musique concrète'. More significantly, he must be counted as one of the most complexly, most idiosyncratically compelling of post-War composers. Ferrari has time and again ranged far afield of musique concrète, and Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 is one such foray into instrumental music. But what a setting-forth! Mon dieu! These particular real…
Works 1939 - 2000
We were saddened to learn of the passing of Lou Harrison as this disc just entered production. It is perhaps fitting that it provides an overview of Harrison's work, from 2 movements of a mass composed in 1939 to 3 vocal arias composed in 2000. Mass to St. Anthony was begun when Hitler invaded Poland; a mass for voices and percussion expressing both outrage and hope. Harrison completed the Gregorian-like chant for the entire 5 movements of the work, but only finished the percussion accomp…
Spectral soprano
This retrospective double CD gives examples of Coxhill's early to recent work involving elements of improvisation including R & B, formally structured jazz, electronics, spontaneous music, an open rendition of an old play, and the odd bit of singing. An enormous variety of music ranging from straight-ahead jazz, to a concerto performance with the London Improvisers Orchestra, to an underwater slide saxophone solo recorded using a microphone in a condom. 135 minutes -- mostly previously unissued.
Simoom
On Simoom we hear three of Lois V. Vierk's works for "big instruments," that is, multiples of the same instrument, treated more like single entities than like groups of voices: Go Guitars for five electric guitars tuned microtonally around "E," Cirrus for six trumpets, and Simoom for eight cellos. All three works employ what Vierk describes as "Exponential Structure," which utilizes exponential relationships to control time, pitch movement and rates of change. Within this system, Vierk creates v…
Einfalt. stille.
Austrian composer in a work for flute, viola, percussion, and voice aboout the inner state and flow we perceive when listening and concentrating on a piece of music.
Sei-jaku für Streichquartett
Documentation '20 Years Inventionen', CD III. The string quartet 'sei-jaku' by German composer Klaus Lang, documented on this CD, was performed on 6/30/2002 in the Großer Sendesaal of the SFB Berlin by the Arditti String Quartet during the festival Inventionen 2002.
Trauermusiken
Two compositions by the young Austrian composer/organist Klaus Lang who currently lives in Berlin/Germany. Der Wind und das Meer for viola (Barbara Konrad, viola) The Sea of Despair for String Quartet (Amras Streichquartett)
Freeman Etudes, Books One and Two
John Cage's Freeman Etudes are the modern equivalent of Paganini's virtuoso solo violin etudes. Each etude is completely notated down to the smallest detail, and the composer states "...are as intentionally as difficult as I can make them...So I think that this music, which is almost impossible, gives an instance of the practicality of the impossible." The detail and complexity of these etudes give them a unique and unusual spot in Cage's oeuvre.
These first two books (there are 8 etudes p…
The Piano Works 7 - Chess Serenade
A major discovery and first recording of an important Cage piece from 1944. In 1944, John Cage was invited to participate in “The Imagery of Chess” exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The artists included Calder, Noguchi, Motherwell, Breton, Duchamp, Ernst, Man Ray, Tanning and other leading surrealists.Cage contributed a painting entitled “Chess Pieces”. It was purchased at the show and went into a private collection. For decades it was deemed lost and was (almost) forgotten…
Sonatas and Interludes
This landmark recording of John Cage’s prepared piano works performed by Mario Bertoncini was recorded back in December 1991. The sonatas are divided into four groups, each divided by the less overtly structured, rhapsodic interlude pieces. Bertoncini sensitivity to the displaced sonic characteristics of the piano is remarkable and suggests a rigorous dedication to Cage’s work.
The Piano Works 2 - Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano
The Sonatas and Interludes enjoy a well deserved reputation as a masterwork and as a repertoire piece. But this is not a masterwork in the sense of other keyboard masterworks: Bach's Goldbergs, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Ives' Concord Sonata.
John Cage's masterwork is quite different -- a big piece with a quiet voice. The prepared piano operates entirely by muting: by attaching objects to the strings of the piano. Cage alters their sounds in various ways, turning the piano into a percussio…