condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (light wear)
With original innersleeve.

The percussionists of the Teatro alla Scala - one of the finest percussion sections in any European opera orchestra - turn here to a programme of twentieth-century music that showcases the full range of what the contemporary percussion ensemble had become by the 1970s. The pairing of Edgard Varèse and Carlos Chávez is historically resonant: both composers had explored the percussion ensemble as a vehicle for pure rhythmic and timbral thinking independent of the pitched-instrument tradition, Varèse in his Ionisation (1931) and Chávez in his Toccata for Percussion (1942), both works foundational texts in the repertoire.

The American composers Michael Udow and Thomas Gauger bring the tradition into the 1970s with works that take the expanded palette of modern percussion - the widened range of mallet instruments, the integration of electronic elements, the increasingly sophisticated approach to rhythm as a compositional parameter - as their starting point. The Scala percussionists bring to this programme a combination of orchestral discipline and chamber music precision that makes the recording genuinely distinguished. I Dischi Dell'Ippopotamo, 5380 601.