★Edition Wandelweiser
Works for piano
Composer: Eva-Maria Houben. Performer: Eva-Maria Houben (piano). 'the sound of the piano decays. it cannot be sustained. I let it loose time and again. it appears by disappearing; starting to disappear just after the attack. in disappearing it begins to live, to change. the piano: an instrument, that allows me to hear how many ways sound can disappear. there seems to be no end to disappearance. I can hear, how listening becomes the awareness of fading sound.' 'Klavier' (2003). 'Drei chorle…
works for double bass
2008 release **
archipelagos and nachtstück allow hearing to take place:partials are alluded to and unfold,merging into multifaceted, richly coloured harmonies.music happens all by itself, seemingly uncomposed –like the sound of the aeolian harp, its strings set in motion by a passing wind.
Works for tromba marina
2007 release **
ein liederbuch13 songs – to be played in free order, all or in small groups, or just a single song.the tromba marina sings – and dances.it sings – and moves in varying tempi:andante sostenuto, allegro ma non troppo, adagio, allegretto moto, comodo, adagissimo,allegretto quasi andantino, molto moderato, largo… dreisätzig the tromba marina can be so many things.a kettledrum, a bass drum, percussion: timpano;a small trumpet, a piccolo trumpet - with melody and accompaniment: clarino…
Chamber Works
2015 release **
"Margriet Hoenderdos, a student of influential Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw, was still honing her own distinctive voice at the time of her premature death in 2010. The precariousness of simply existing is effectively evoked in a 21 minute woodwind quintet in which she responded to a poem by Hans Faverey, written as he endured his own terminal illness. Sombre and harmonically anxious, this music resembles a physical construction that appears sturdy, yet has an unnerving tendency to…
Five Compositions
2015 release **
"Pieces written for a sextet of flute, clarinet, percussion (quiet, white-noisy/rattley-type things), violin, viola and cello. They each follow a similar pattern, presenting a solitary idea – a chord, an instrumental texture – that alternates with short silences and gradually evolves with each return. The first, two and three, is almost like breathing. The sounds themselves are beautifully and carefully devised, particularly the gently descending peals in mulberry grove, but it …
Beten. Prayer
2015 release **
This really is a special one. Solo voice carries so many connotations, of speech, of song, of chant, of prayer. It’s the most directly human, personal, unmediated instrument of all. It’s the way we speak to each other, comfort each other, entertain ourselves, reassure ourselves, talk to our gods. There are elements of all on this CD; remarkably so, because on first listen at least all seven pieces inhabit similarly restrained, private and reticent soundworlds. There is a general …
Anfangen (:Aufhoren)
2013 release **"A split disc with five compositions by Stiegler and two by Ablinger, each performed by some combination of violin (Sabine Akiko Ahrendt), cello (Jan-Filip Tupa) and clarinet (Diego Montes). I think I'd only heard Stiegler's work before in conjunction with Hannes Seidl on their early Wandelweiser release, "das wetter in offenbach". Here, he evinces a rather playful approach, especially in the two "Treibut" (flotsam) pieces, 1/2 (2011) and II (2009); playful but with a nicely bitte…
Songs and piano pieces
music that allows sounds to sound: to die away, completely, into silence sounds thought from their end: not moving forward, but drawing back. this creates space, expanse, a delicate serenity: silence - and what it shelters - becomes audible. this is singing with the ears: barely more than silence. a singing which not only makes, but becomes space: a space for worlds. phrases are also sounds: unfolded, laid out as a path. sound paths that come into being first when followed, invariably trail…
24 Worter
JF: The 24 words are the titles of the individual pieces, and they are at the same time the entire text. They are also a list that shows how the piece gets from a beginning to an end. It is, in a sense, a cycle not simply a collection of pieces - a cycle which begins, makes a journey and ends at a different place. TA: If I had to categorize this list of words, it seems to me they are addressed to quite different areas. Herzeleid (Heartbreak) for example, sounds old-fashioned, Einsamkeitsmangel …
West coast soundings
2014 release **
New compilation of works by emerging west coast composers who somehow belong within a John Cage lineage. Music by James Tenney, Michael Pisaro and their students, Mark So, Michael Winter, Chris Kallmyer, Tashi Wada, Liam Mooney, Scott Cazan, Laura Steenberge, Cat Lamb, Quentin Tolimieri and Casey Anderson. "A compilation of work by twelve composers, ten of whom studied with James Tenney and/or Michael Pisaro (who are also represented by pieces here) at Cal Arts, performed by a qu…
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…
Druids and questions
2011 release **
"One work, an hour long, consisting of "electro-acoustic music with organ sounds". Had only the latter been indicated, I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow as almost all of what one hears sounds as though it could have been generated by adapted organ pipes. The passages, full but soft, embedded in a quieter hiss, are airy and breathy with a tracery of organ-tone within, the kind of sound I imagine could be conjured up by allowing more air to escape a pipe than normal. What other sou…
An unrhymed chord
2010 release **
""sixty-five minutes long. two periods of thirty minutes each, with a five minute silence between them. each performer find one sound, preferably with pitch. the sound is played for one duration, between one and fifteen minutes, in each thirty minute period, making sure, in the first period, not to cross over into silence. the duration of the sound may change from one period to the next. one of the durations may be zero seconds. (i.e., a player might decide not to play in one of …
cage.frey.vriezen.feldman.ayres.johnson manion
Pianist and composer Dante Boon often programs his recitals as webs. He likes to put compositions of great diversity in style and technique side by side. However, myriad connections can always be found between pairs of pieces, and these give the whole a subtle coherence. This is also how his first CD is organized, presenting pieces by seven composers spanning almost a century of music. But the most important unifying element of this disc is Dante's own musical personality and approach to the pia…
Hearing Metal 1
2009 release **
"The first Stockhausen I ever heard, back in college, was Microphonie and I've always remained partial to the general family of sounds elicited therein. So it's not surprising, all else aside, that I'm drawn to the music here, derived from the excitation, via bows and strokes of a 60" tam-tam much like that used by Stockhausen, sensitively played by Greg Stuart. The added flavor, as is Pisaro's wont, is the integration of sine tones pitched very close to the range of the tam-tam …
Counting Keys
2009 release **
"In case you're surprised to find a Tom Johnson album on Wandelweiser – after all, I reckon there are more actual notes on Counting Keys than on the rest of the albums released on the über-redux label put together – it's worth remembering that Tom Johnson and Wandelweiser prime mover Antoine Beuger know and greatly respect each other's work. This collection of four pieces spanning nearly three decades of Johnson's career is one of the composer's more accessible (though no less ri…
Pianopera I & II
2004 release **
"Another joint production by Edition Wandelweiser and Radio Bremen testifies to the originality of the Japanese composer Makiko Nishikaze. Her idiosyncratic diptych pianopera l & II (2002), with its unpredictably alternating sound structures, follows no discernible logic, yet its musical structure never seems arbitrary, so that the music, despite the great aesthetic distance, certainly seems related to Luigi Archetti's CD discussed at the beginning. It is the varied penetration i…
Stones
2009 release **
The score of "Stones" consists of just a few lines of text:Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, using a number of sizes and kinds (and colours); for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones wfth stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than struck (bowed, for instance, or amplified). Do not break anything. Christian Wolff, STONES, (from: Prose Collection, 1968…
ChamberEvents
2005 release **
The works on this CD represent three different series of compositions, which I have been working on simultaneously in the last few years. Structurally, their individual parts resemble each other: all instruments play (rather) long sounds, each one followed by a pause.55 similar events plus two drummers drumming (1999) consists of two layers of events. On the one hand, seven instruments are organized ‘isophonically’ and with regular durations. Their sounds, each comprising the sam…