Composition / Contemporary

Frederic Rzewski’s work “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” is based on the Chilean protest song, “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!,” written by Sergio Ortega a few months before Pinochet’s military coup in September of 1973.Frederic Rzewski came to Europe as a young man, lived in Cologne and Rome, and created a sensation as an avant-garde pianist with his premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Klavierstück X”. He worked with the leading composers of the time and was himself a composer.…

Beautiful new Jacob Ullman Organ composition of subtle gradations in sound performed very softly forcing the ear to notice the smallest variations. "Thus, Ullmann creates a quiet music in order to give himself and his listeners the opportunity to hear more, and better. This comes about because our ability to hear is augmented when listening to quiet music. We hear better because we make an effort to hear better. That is why Ullmann likes to locate his sound sources at the periphery, so as not to…

2012 release ** "Number 4 of the Salzburg Festival “Kontinent” series was dedicated to Wolfgang Rihm. We have compiled a selection of the works for your conven- ience – including a first recording! Wolfgang Rihm once claimed that the most appropriate statements about his oeuvre are his own compositions. In 2010 the Salzburg Festival adopted this approach. The result was a “Kontinent Rihm” which placed the manifold tone colors and modes of expression created by the former Stockhausen student into…

We know the mantra all too well: If I love it, what can I do but repeat it? If I repeat it, what can I do but get bored with it? One answer might be (must be): to make out of its repetition something infinitely variable. This Clementi has done for the last twenty years. He has found a technician's answer to the familiar question of what to do, musically, with the compulsive nature of memory, the obstinate tenacity of the Proustian 'petite phase'. Beethoven and Brahms exorcised this power, this c…

4CD Box edition. Ranked #4 in the the Wire's Rewind 2012 best-of list. Three CD box collection with a 16-page booklet. "Experimental German composer Jakob Ullmann creates quiet music in order to give himself and his listeners the opportunity to hear more, and better. This comes about because our ability to hear is augmented when listening to quiet music. We hear better because we make an effort to hear better. That is why Ullmann likes to locate his sound-sources at the periphery, so as not to m…

Three of John Cage's late number pieces, Five, Seven and Thirteen, recorded in 1993-94 by Essential Music of New York and released for the first time. Thirteen, Cage's final completed work, is heard in only its second recording.

A portrait of Christian Wolff, documenting the composer's early activity through recordings made close to the time of their composition from artists including Cornelius Cardew, Frederic Rzewski, David Tudor

Roger Reynolds's Sanctuary for spatially distributed percussion ensemble and live electronics, presented in three versions on a double DVD: a studio performance, a live performance at the National Gallery of Art and excerpts from the Salk Institute.

The complete Imaginary Landscapes 1-5 and Credo in US by John Cage, with radios, phonograph records and percussion, played by Percussion Group Cincinnati in the first volume of the Mode Cage percussion works.

Fourth volume of Giacinto Scelsi's piano works: Hispania, Suite No. 5 Il Circo and Suite No. 6 I Capricci di Ty, three first recordings of large early works from the 1930s, played by Stephen Clarke.

Three works by Luc Ferrari: Visage 2 (1955-56) and Après presque rien (2004), both first recordings with Musiques Nouvelles and Art Zoyd, and Madame de Shanghai for three flutes and digital sounds.

Margaret Leng Tan's follow-up to The Art of the Toy Piano: Cage's Suite for Toy Piano and Dream, a George Crumb song and other pieces, played on six toy pianos plus toy instruments, grand piano, music boxes and percussion.

Six compositions for chamber ensembles performed the Ensemble 2e2m by Giuliano D’Angiolini, ethnomusicologist and composer  who "is a positively unique figure in contemporary music. His profound, well-conceived and stubborn take on music has led him to what he calls »impersonal« music — music that has fully abandoned the idea of development or form. Through successive states of presentation, which aim to elucidate, d’Angiolini wanted to leave place in sound so that music could become less volunt…

Stefano Scodanibbio's Oltracuidansa for contrabass and 8-channel tape (stereo version), built from almost six hours of contrabass sounds made with 26 methods of sound production, with the tape created at CCMIX in Paris.

Originally released in 2000. Looking for just one Morton Feldman CD to give to someone that you like more than yourself? There's more than one correct answer to this elusive question, but this overwhelming set (closing in on 300 total minutes) is an utter classic, with paralyzing sonic power. Feldman is recognized as one of the 20th century's most influential composers. Feldman's artistic principles were shaped in the early 1950s by his association with composers John Cage, Earle Brown and…

Second volume of Iannis Xenakis's works for piano with instruments, played by Aki Takahashi with Rohan de Saram, the JACK Quartet and the Callithumpian Consort, including a new recording of Eonta for piano, trumpets and trombones.

Aldo Clementi's works for flutes, issued for his 75th birthday: Fantasia su roBErto FABbriCiAni, Ouverture for 12 flutes, Passacaglia, luCiAno BErio and Parafrasi 2, played by Roberto Fabbriciani with tapes restored by Alvise Vidolin.

DVD of two filmed portraits made by Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris for French TV in the 1960s: Stockhausen rehearsing Momente, and Hommage à Edgard Varèse, released here for the first time with English subtitles.

A hybrid acoustic tape piece of solo violin on four track tape, and a work for four violins, composed in 1974 by Harley Gaber

3-CD Set.  Recorded between 1960 and 1973, the original eighteen LPs that comprise Earle Brown's legendary Contemporary Sound Series have been highly sought after in the secondary market since 1978 when they were discontinued. These rare and historically important recordings of international avant-garde music have been carefully digitized and remastered by the Earle Brown Music Foundation. Volume two includes music by Nono (Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica), Bruno Maderna (Serenata No. 2), Luciano Ber…

Charisma X, a 2008 documentary film by Efi Xirou on the life and work of Iannis Xenakis, from childhood to his last work Omega, with archive footage, interviews and performances of his music by Sylvio Gualda, Benny Sluchin and others.

Scelsi Edition volume 2: three rarely recorded orchestral works, Hymnos, Hurqualia and Konx-Om-Pax, played by the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic under Juan Pablo Izquierdo, with selections from Canti del Capricorno sung by Pauline Vaillancourt and Douglas Ahlstedt.

Morton Feldman's Trio for violin, cello and piano, lasting one hour, 45 minutes, in a recording with Aki Takahashi, Marc Sabat and Rohan de Saram, two of whom worked closely with the composer.

Just arrived, this is the newest edition RZ release focused on a radical electronic (+ Ensemble) music by Clara Maida "During the first years of my compositional research, my goal was to mark out, in my music, the flux of the psychic energy at work in the unconscious and its underlying structure. At the time, I was going through an analytical process favouring access to this unconscious activity, and my readings in the field of psychoanalysis were helping me in the effort to elaborate a musical …

I am particularly pleased, because the result is so different from the solo flute recording of Eberhard Blum and the solo clarinet recording of Roger Heaton. It is not just another interpretation, but a case where interpreters have added so much insight to the music that the music itself has grown. When I was composing this music around 1982, I really thought I was simply writing melodies, but now these little pieces, though remaining melodies, have become something much more, something I…

Recordings from the Elektronic Studio at the TU Berlin, the Studio of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, and at Patrick Kosk's own studio

Six minimalist works by Reich, Riley, Andriessen, Gann, Adams and David Lang played by Orkest de Volharding under Jussi Jaatinen, including first recordings of City Life for wind orchestra and Kyle Gann's Sunken City.

Xenakis Edition volume 10 and the first complete recording of Iannis Xenakis's string quartets, played by the JACK Quartet: Tetras, Tetora, ST/4-1,080262 and Ergma, the last quartet, released on CD and surround-sound DVD.

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…

Six chamber works by Frank Denyer from 1973-2001, including Out of the Shattered Shadows 1 and 2, Faint Traces, Music for Two Performers, Play and Passages, in composer-supervised performances by The Barton Workshop.

Mode's 200th release: John Cage himself performs Empty Words together with Music for Piano (with Yvar Mikhashoff) and the solo work One7, recorded at Buffalo in April 1991 and released for the first time.

First recording of Peter Ablinger's 33-127 (2002) for electric guitar and CD, played by Seth Josel: 95 pieces in which a descending scale meets recorded street noise, in just under an hour.

A complete video realization of John Cage's 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs by Don Gillespie, Roberta Friedman and Gene Caprioglio, filmed at 147 New York City locations in 1994-95 with durations set by the I-Ching.

First volume of Mode's Luc Ferrari series: Chansons pour le corps, built on interviews with women recorded in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and the symphonic tale Et si tout entière maintenant for actress, tapes and orchestra.

Chamber music by Hans Werner Henze, weighted toward pieces drawn from his theatre works, played by the Naples-based Ensemble Dissonanzen: Ein kleines Potpourri from Boulevard Solitude, Toccata Mistica, Drei Tentos and Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge among others.

Edition RZ presents John McGuire's Works For Instruments. Performers: Ensemble Modern -- Julia Rempe (soprano); Pellegrini-Quartett: Antonio Pellegrini, Thomas Hofer (violin); Fabio Marano (viola); Helmut Menzler (violoncello); musikFabrik: Hermann Kretzschmar, Paulo Alvarez, Irmela Roelcke, Eun-Ju Kim, Ulrich Löffler, Jürgen Kruse (piano), Christine Chapman, Jodie Lawson, Charles Putnam, Rohan Richards (horns), Dirk Rothbrust, Carlos Tarcha (percussion). Each of the compositions of post-minimal…

John Cage's Five Stone Wind (1988) and Cartridge Music (1960), both written for Merce Cunningham dances, played by David Tudor, Takehisa Kosugi and Michael Pugliese. 2008 remaster of the 1991 release, Cage Edition volume 4.

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Anthony Pateras is a composer/performer based in Melbourne who is as comfortable writing for full orchestra as he is performing in intimate improvisational groupings. Pateras represents the best in the new generation of musicians combining the spontaneity of improvisation with the formal logic of composition and for his second Tzadik CD, he has chosen an eclectic mix of ensemble pieces that blend instrumental virtuosity and electroacoustic sonorities in star…

The first complete recording of Giacinto Scelsi's music for double bass, played by Robert Black with guests on cello, harp, tam-tam and second bass, including Ko-Tha in Fernando Grillo's transcription.

First recording of Iannis Xenakis's Kraanerg (1968) for 23 instruments and 4-channel tape, with the tape restored from the analog masters, played by the Callithumpian Consort conducted by Stephen Drury.