The Art of the Toy Piano 2
Margaret Leng Tan, toy pianos, toy instruments, piano, percussion, music boxes, voice. In addition to being a renowned new music pianist, Margaret Leng Tan is the foremost specialist at the toy piano. She has concertized worldwide with her miniature instruments, bestowing them with serious music status in repertoire both written for her and arrangements. For this disc of attractive yet challenging music, Ms. Tan performs Cage's classic 'Suite for Toy Piano' plus her arrangement of Cage's seminal…
Oltracuidansa
Oltracuidansa is the radical questioning of the relation between the performer’s body and instrument: What is the language of the contrabass? How to give voice to the thought? In the variety of the contrabass voices, how to find “The Voice”? And finally, if “the voice’s flight in the language must come to an end”, if “the achieved thought has no more thought”, doesn’t one arrive at the abyss of silence? Stefano Scodanibbio — regarded as one of the great interpreters of the contemporary con…
Works With Piano - Eonta
Pianist Aki Takahashi’s follows up her acclaimed first disc of Xenakis piano works (which won a "Diapason d’or" in France) with this second volume, of works for piano with instruments. She is joined by an all-star cast of players: Rohan de Saram (formerly of the Arditti Quartet), The JACK Quartet, and the Callithumpian Consort conducted by Stephen Drury. All works are underrepresented in current recordings or difficult to find at all. Included is the first new recording in over 10 years o…
Works With Flutes
The release of this CD celebrates Aldo Clementi’s 75th birthday in 2010. Clementi is one of the remaining living composers of the Italian avant-garde generation, which included Berio, Nono and Maderna. Clementi’s works for flute (including works for multiple flutes and flute with tape) are performed by one of his long-time collaborators, Roberto Fabbriciani – some of these works were written for or dedicated to him. Many of these works utilize Clementi’s signature explorations of the canno…
Les Grandes Répétitions
Two films, part of a series made for French television in the mid 1960s, of concert rehearsals. In the earlier film it’s Stockhausen’s Momente that’s being rehearsed (with long sections of performance) interspersed with KS speaking about himself and his work and the thinking behind his work. Just buy it. It’s completely exceptional, in every way. Stockhausen himself is both eloquent and profound, and speaks as he composes, with thought behind every word. His intensity at work, which is gripping,…
Charisma X
A documentary film by Efi Xirou with composers George Apergis, François Bernard Mâche, Gerard Pape, Curtis Roads and featuring Françoise xenakis, Makis Solomos, Sharon Kanach, Mâkhi xenakis. Charisma X presents the visonary work and ideas of Greek composer and architect iannis xenakis structured around musical performances, interviews and testimonies from xenakis' collaborators and those with a deep understanding of his work. Musical performances and recollections are presented from percussionis…
The orchestral works 1
'Hymnos' (1963) for organ & 2 orchestras. 'Hurqualia' (1960) for large orchestra. 'Konx-Om-Pax' (1968) for large orchestra & chorus. The Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic & Concert Choir. Juan Pablo Izquierdo, conductor. 'Canti del Capricorno' for voices & instruments. Pauline Vaillancourt, soprano. Douglas Ahlstedt, tenor. Volume 2 in Mode's scelsi Edition presents three of his rarely heard and recorded orchestral works, vividly captured in outstanding sound. Hymnos' large orchestra is divided antip…
Trio
The expansive length of Morton Feldman’s Trio (1 hr., 45 min., 22 sec.) requires a new approach to listening, which takes scale, the physical experience of sound, and novel uses of musical memory into consideration. With his delicate manipulation of musical materials, Feldman blurs the listener’s sense of time as their musical memory struggles to distinguish between past and present sounds - listeners are free to lose themselves in the beauty of each musical moment. Aki Takahashi and Rohan…
Complete String Quartets
Xenakis Edition Volume 10 - Complete String Quartets. On Surround Sound DVD only: The studio recording process was dynamically captured by a multiple camera shoot. Each quartet is given its own visual treatment. Filmed in High Definition Video, widescreen format. 48khz-24-bit high resolution 5.1 surround sound recording. 'Tetras' (1983). 'Tetora' (1990.) 'ST-4-1,080262' (1956-62). 'Ergma' (1994). The Jack Quartet: Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violins. John Pickford Richards, viola. Kevin…
Cage Performs Cage
Empty Words (1973-74) with Music for Piano (1952-56). John Cage, voice. Yvar Mikhashoff, piano. One7 (1991) for any way of producing sounds. John cage, voice. Mode celebrates its 200th release with a special installment in its John cage Edition - works performed by John cage himself, released for the first time. These recordings were made in Buffalo, New York in April 1991. cage and Mode Records were in Buffalo to work on the premiere of his Europera 5, which he wrote for Yvar Mikhashoff, a long…
33-127 for Electric Guitar and CD
From orchestral works to installations, Peter Ablinger's oeuvre explores the differences between reality and our perception of reality. In '33–127' for electric guitar and CD, Ablinger confronts the rational, human division of sound into musical scales with the complex acoustical reality of any given moment - its "noise." In each of the 95 pieces that make up 33–127, these two realities come face to face again and again. In each piece, a scale descends, with gentle and unpredictable irregulariti…
Treatise (Prague Version, 1967)
Featured work: "Treatise (Live Recording, Prague 1967)." Performed by: QUaX Ensemble (Petr Kotik, Director). "This performance of Cardew's monumental 193-page graphic score 'Treatise' was recorded live in Prague in 1967 by the Czech QUaX Ensemble, directed by composer/flutist/conductor Petr Kotik. This historical recording offers a unique perspective to hear 'Treatise' as interpreted by Cardew's contemporaries. Kotik met Cardew in Warsaw in 1962, and they began exchanging scores by mail, includi…
49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs
A complete video realization by Don Gillespie, Roberta Friedman and Gene Caprioglio. John Cage's artwork, "49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs", appeared in the October 6, 1977 Rolling Stone magazine - a gala issue celebrating their move to New York. He constructed his "waltzes" through chance operations as a series of 49 multi-colored triangles superimposed on the Hagstrom map of New York City. Later, he published a score for "performer(s) or listener(s) or record maker(s)" with the exact street l…
Volume 1: Chansons Pour Le Corps
With recent releases on John Zorn's Tzadik label among others, Luc Ferrari is enjoying a well deserved renaissance. After studies with Messiaen and formative visits to Darmstadt in the '50s, Ferrari (born Paris, 1929), with Pierre Schaeffer, was one of the co-founders of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1959. In the sixties he worked with the Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine de Paris and made the first French television documentaries on new music, between 1964-69, he ta…
Music for Merce Cunningham
2008 repress, featuring a 24-bit Hi-Definition remaster; originally released in 1991. Volume 4 in the Music of Cage series. The first audio document between John Cage & Merce Cunningham. It includes a 55-minute piece called "Five Stone Wind" performed by David Tudor (live electronics), Takehisa Kosugi (amplified violin, live electronics, bamboo flute) and Michael Pugliese (clay pots and tapes) as well as a 19-minute version of the classic "Cartridge Music" (same 3 performers, "using phonograph c…
The works of double bass
This disc contains the first complete recordings of Giacinto Scelsi's music for double bass. Volume 7 in Mode's acclaimed Scelsi Edition. Scelsi's infamous 'KO-THA I, II, Ill' -- for string instrument played lying on its back in a percussive manner -- is presented for the first time in an adaptation from the original for guitar by legendary bassist Fernando Grillo. Robert Black, internationally known as one of the leading bassists of our time, has also collaborated or performed with a diverse nu…
Kraanerg
Kraanerg (1968) for 23 instruments and 4-channel tape. Callithumpian Consort. Stephen Drury, conductor. First recording with restored analog tape. Kraanerg is one of Xenakis' most popular - and infamous - works. A visceral and highly charged score for woodwinds, brass, and strings along with quadrophonic tape. The title, Kraanerg, is a composite of two Greek words: 'kraan', meaning to perfect, to accomplish; and erg, signifying energy. Commissioned for the gala opening of the National Arts Centr…
The revenge of the dead indians: in memoriam John Cage
The Revenge of the Dead Indians: In Memoriam John Cage (1993), a composed film directed by Henning Lohner. Featuring: Gary Burton, John Cage, Noam Chomsky, Merce Cunningham, William Forsythe, Betty Freeman, Frank Gehry, Murray Gell-Mann, Matt Groening, Rutger Hauer, Dennis Hopper, Ellsworth Kelly, Alison Knowles, Raymond Kurzweil, Edward Lorenz, Benoît Mandelbrot, Yehudi Menuhin, Marvin Minsky, Heiner Müller, Jean Nouvel, Yoko Ono, Tomaso Poggio, Richard Serra, Shankar, Giorgio Strehler, Iannis …
The Artistry of Margaret Leng Tan
10 years in the making, 2 films by Evans Chan trace the artist's life, career and pianism. Strumming the strings of a grand piano like a harp and performing Beethoven on toy piano are among the surprising scenes in Evans Chan's documentary, Sorceress of the New Piano (2004), which celebrates the trans-cultural career of Singapore-born, New York-based pianist Margaret Leng Tan, hailed by The New Yorker as 'the diva of avant-garde pianism.' Featured performers and critics include Joan LaBarbara, E…
Atlas Eclipticalis With Winter Music
Featured compositions: "Atlas Eclipticalis' (1961, for chamber ensemble); "Winter Music" (1957, for 3 pianos); "Atlas Eclipitcalis" (1961, for orchestra); "Winter Music" (1957, for 20 pianos). Cage's relationship with the Cornish Institute in Seattle dates back to the 1930s, when he taught there and performed as accompanist for many dance pieces. Cornish was also the scene of several of his musical discoveries and innovations. Cage's celebrated return to the Cornish Institute in 1983 led to thes…