condition (record/cover): NM / NM
Gatefold sleeve.

The essential document of Les Percussions de Strasbourg - the French ensemble that, from its foundation in 1962, did more than any other single group to establish the percussion ensemble as a major vehicle for contemporary composition - and a 2LP Philips set that remains one of the most comprehensive surveys of the percussion repertoire produced in the post-war decades. The roster of composers gathered here maps the full breadth of what the six-player ensemble had been able to commission and premiere: Edgard Varèse, whose Ionisation had effectively created the genre; Iannis Xenakis, whose Persephassa (1969, composed for the group) surrounded the six players in a circle around the audience; John Cage; Miloslav Kabeláč; Maurice Ohana; Carlos Chávez; and Kazimierz Serocki.

The group's combination of rhythmic precision, timbral imagination, and the physical staging of their performances as spatial events gave each of these works a realization that no other ensemble of the period could have matched. Xenakis's contribution - one of the most spatially ambitious percussion works ever composed - requires exactly the combination of mathematical rigor and physical presence that Les Percussions de Strasbourg brought uniquely to its music. Philips, 6718 040.