OLIVER KNUSSEN - SYMPHONIES 2 & 3   NMC D175

Acclaimed Glasgow born composer and conductor Oliver Knussen studied composition with John Lambert. He also received encouragement from Benjamen Britten and as Co-Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival and former head of Contemporary Music Activities at Tanglewood, he has influenced contemporary music in many parts of the world. One of British music’s great originals, noted for his painstaking perfectionism, Knussen’s work is complex yet accessible and highly enjoyable. He conducts the London Sinfonietta and soprano soloist Elaine Barry here in a recording of his Symphony No 2, a song cycle based on texts of Georg Trakl and Sylvia Plath. Michael Tilson Thomas conducts The Philharmonia Orchestra in Symphony No 3, a symphonic poem about Shakespeare’s Ophelia. The CD also features several other works by Knussen - Trumpets (for soprano and three clarinets, with soloist Linda Hirst) the exhilarating Coursing, the sprightly Ophelia Dances and Cantata (for oboe and chamber orchestra). Two other new releases from NMC include work by contemporary British composers. MICHAEL FINNISSY - STRING QUARTETS (NMC D180) features the excellent Kreutzer Quartet in recordings of Michael Finnissy’s Second Quartet (‘based on a compact Haydn model’ and originally intended to be the ‘Lark’) and his Third Quartet, which incorporates actual birdsong, both transcribed and recorded, as the composer’s response to the natural world and our place in it: the instruments gradually fade out, to leave only the sound of birds. ROB KEELEY - SONGS, CHIMES AND DANCES (NMC D179) has recordings of chamber works by Rob Keeley, formerly a student of Oliver Knussen at the Royal College of Music. The music includes Keeley’s evocative Skalkottas tribute Bells of Halkis and the Satie-esque ‘Gallic’ of trio Oregon Moods, as well as the title piece, performed by Rob Keeley (piano) and other fine musicians such as Richard Watkins (horn), Andrew Sparling (clarinet), Melinda Maxwell (oboe) and Robin Michael (cello).

THEA MUSGRAVE – AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE   NMC D167

Thea Musgrave was born in Barton, Scotland, and studied at Edinburgh University and at the Paris Conservatoire with Nadia Boulanger. With a list of works that includes ten operas and two ballets, she is a composer whose creativity is based on a vivid dramatic instinct. Even her concert works may be conceived as dramatic scenarios between individual instruments and orchestral sections, the drama on occasions emphasised by staging instructions to the musicians. She adopted serialism in the 1960s, though her style has since evolved towards a robust and luxuriant lyricism. Rich, powerful musical language and this strong sense of drama have made Thea Musgrave one of the most respected of living composers. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is Musgrave’s haunting ‘opera for radio’, a dreamlike tale of the American Civil War based on Ambrose Bierce’s short story about a Confederate sympathiser condemned to death by hanging. The CD also includes recordings of Green, written for 12 solo strings, and Wild Winter I, for solo voices and viol consort, both exploring different aspects of conflict past and present. Performers include the leading bass-baritone Jake Gardner, Gayle Hunnicutt (narrator), the London Sinfonietta conducted by Thea Musgrave, Red Byrd, Fretwork and the Scottish Ensemble. Other new NMC releases include BIG MEETING (NMC D171), an extraordinary collage of voices, speeches, songs, brass bands and their electronic transformations, which composer David Lumsdaine constructed from location recordings of the 1971 Durham Miners’ Gala. ‘Emotionally affecting.’ - Wire. Robert Saxton’s THE WANDERING JEW (NMC D170) is the composer’s long-awaited radio opera, commissioned by the BBC. It’s a modernist take on the tale of the Wandering Jew – the shoe-mender condemned by Jesus to wander the Earth until the Second Coming after he refused to help him on his way to his Crucifixion. The opera introduces many legendary characters, following medieval and other myths, including Faust, Mephistopheles, Kundry and Wotan. Underneath its surface lies a structure relating to the annual cycle of Jewish and Christian festivals in eight scenes of sweeping orchestral and choral music, enhanced by post-production studio effects. MY BROKEN MACHINES (NMC D169) features Ed Bennett’s music, which has been described as ‘anarchic’ (Irish Times), ‘manic’ (Classical Music), ‘brutal’ (Guardian) and ‘beautiful’ (Gramophone). With strong rhythmic energy and extreme contrasts, his work combines acoustic, electronic and multimedia elements. Highlights include Ghosts, for amplified viola d’amore, Stop-Motion Music, and My Broken Machines, inspired by a childhood memory of an old fairground filled with ‘laughing policemen, mechanical fortune tellers, tests of strength, ghost trains and an array of other eccentric machines’.

ALAN SCHMITZ - NINETIES TIMEFLOW   RAVELLO RECORDS RR7821

This digital revamp of the Capstone release features Schmitz’s works for small chamber groups, all composed in the 1990s. They are Schmitz’s Allegro for wind quintet including oboe (soloist Tom Barry); the lovely Dance and Dream Sequence (Todd Seelye, guitarist who premiered the work in 1997 at the University of Northern Iowa); String Trio (played by The Concordia String Trio, for whom it was written); March and Serenade (played by the composer’s sons Christopher and Lee on trombone and piano); Spiritual Excursion, based on the famous Bahama spiritual ‘All My Trials’ (Leslie Perna, viola, Randy Hogancamp, vibraphone, and Eric Schmitz, timpani; The Bassoon Trio; Song and Dance (Therese Fetter, violin, and Randy Hogancamp, marimba); and Love in the Western World - a setting of a poem by Robert Wilkinson - sung by soprano Leslie Morgan. This intriguing, accessible music is beautifully played throughout.

NÁLADA - LISA MILES      RAVELLO RECORD RR7816

The young American composer and performer Lisa Miles is from Pittsburgh PA. Uniquely blending the arts and humanities, she composes and performs, is the author of two books and a personal and professional development consultant. Among others, she has worked with choreographers Jose Bustamante, David Parsons, H T Chen and performance artist Animal X and has performed solo at Philadelphia’s Fringe Fest, the Andy Warhol Museum and The Mattress Factory. Her music combines classical chops and punk rock influences in both her spirited solo work and unique collaborations with other instrumentalists (cello, bass, harp, voice, guitar). Lisa Miles describes her music as ‘tending toward either the edgy and intense, or the atmospheric, dark and meditative’ - both of which come through in force on her debut release, NÁLADA. The CD release features wildly original compositions for acoustic and electric violin and mandolin, many of which were composed for and informed live, collaborative, cross-disciplinary performance. Highlights include the eerily beautiful Bowl Dance, the sprightly Lynn’s Dance, Recessional and Punk #2, and the title track, Nalada, for electric mandolin, violin and guitar. Other new releases from Ravello/Navona Records include virtuoso violist Shelly Tramposh's SPREZZATURA (RR7818), Tony Clef's intriguing guitar arrangements and transcriptions of popular songs for guitar, TUESDAY AFTERNOON (BR8916), and DIVERGENCE (NV5858), a collection of violin concerti written by three living composers (Nicholas Sackman, Scott Michal and William Thomas McKinley) played by the Moravian Philharmonic and Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestras with soloists Ondřej Lébr, Vít Muzík, Glenn Dicterow, and Karen Dreyfus.

PHILLIP SCHROEDER - PASSAGE THROUGH A DREAM    INNOVA 781

Passage Through a Dream offers five premiere recordings of new music by composer Phillip Schroeder - beautiful and vibrant tracks that feature lyric melodies and lush, intricate textures. Born in 1956 in Rancho Cordova, California, Phillip Schroeder’s musical life began early and paralleled the diversity of his surroundings - living in twelve states, playing trumpet in concert bands and electric bass in rock and jazz bands, singing in choirs, conducting orchestral and chamber groups, improvising with a variety of ensembles, and as a concert pianist. His music for soloists, chamber ensembles, live electronics, orchestra, and choir, has been described by critics as ‘wonderfully evocative,’ ‘ethereal,’ and ‘rich in subtle detail.’ In Passage Through a Dream Schroeder expands and develops musical ideas found in his critically acclaimed 2006 CD, Move in the Changing Light, about which Ron Shepper wrote in textura, ‘Schroeder generates dense masses of sparkling trills and cascades….The sound that results verges on the paradisaical’. Performers include Schroeder on piano and electric bass, soprano Erin Bridgeman, the multi-talented Rick Dimond on accordion and vibraphone, clarinetist/composer Michael Henson, harpist Jane Grothe, flutist Jennifer Amox and new music clarinettist Marty Walker.

LIGHT AND SHADOW  NAVONA NV5847

This all-new collection features modern orchestral music by composers Adrienne Albert, Daniel Perttu, Rain Worthington, Rebecca Oswald, Russ Lombardi and Tadd Russo. The works range from a musical depiction of the imagery of war to the representation of the impressionistic logic of dreams to a bold, tonal piece inspired by a property dispute. With all tracks shorter than nine minutes, this collection of accessible music offers a succinct and powerful view into the world of modern orchestral composition. Highlights include Tracing a Dream and the majestic Light and Shadow in the Yosemite Valley. Other new recent releases by the always innovative Navona Records label include ETERNAL EVOLUTION (NAVONA NV5846) featuring four pieces by Judith Lang Zaimont performed by the renowned Harlem Quartet and pianist Awadagin Pratt. Known for its distinctive style - strongly expressive, emotional and dramatic - Zaimont’s music has drawn performers from around the world several of her works have achieved repertoire status. The chamber music on this release counts on an intimate artistic connection between the performers in order to properly express the many changes in tempo, meter, and attitude in each movement. ASTRAL VINYL (NAVONA NV5850) is a collection by the composer, arranger, performer and producer Stephen Barber. His impressive original music draws an inner conversation free from constraints to create eclectic works that invite emotional involvement and provide fresh perspectives. The works on this disc range from a piece for string quartet to a fanfare for brass ensemble to a piece for soprano, piano and steel drum trio, all of which are uniquely and brilliantly imaginative. SAXOPHONE CONCERTO (NAVONA NV5848) is the latest release from Lee Actor and features five of his compositions: Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, which exploits the considerable dramatic and expressive possibilities of the saxophone; the exciting Dance Rhapsody for orchestra, which consists of several strongly rhythmic dance sections interspersed with two slower, non-rhythmic interludes; Concerto for Horn and Orchestra, a work of compact dimensions, consisting of three movements; Opening Remarks, a brisk, upbeat, 6-minute work for orchestra designed as a concert opener; and Celebration Overture, a joyous and invigorating piece with instrumentation similar to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Actor’s music is filled with rhythmic drive and shows a superb ear for orchestral color, and he is able to create music that catches the ear and draws the listener into a world of emotion and drama.

REFLECTIONS      NAVONA RECORDS NV5835

Reflections features the works of contemporary composers Alejandro CastanÞos, Jane O’Leary, Stephen Gardner, Judith Ring, and Si-Hyun Yi as performed by the Ireland-based Concorde Music Ensemble. The disc features a wide variety of compositions, including a duo that embodies the lightness and directness of traditional Klezmer music, an intricately layered tape piece, a series of free-tempo miniatures, and more. Concorde was founded in 1976 to promote new music on a regular basis. The group made its debut in the American Embassy in Dublin and has since performed widely throughout Ireland and Europe. Playing alongside the Concorde players on this disc is legendary Dutch bass clarinetist Harry Sparnaay. American born pianist and director of the ensemble Jane O’Leary conducts her own mysteriously beautiful composition, Reflections II. Other highlights include the exciting Angulos by CastanÞos, Judith Ring’s wonderfully titled (and brilliantly played) ‘…within an egg of space…’, and Si-Hyun Yi’s ‘The Magic Fiddle in the Desert’. This is adventurous, inventive and always surprising music performed by one of the world’s best modern music groups.

SUB CITY 2064 - ERDEM HELVACIOGLU

Erdem Helvacioğlu is one of Turkey’s leading electronic music composers and his works have been performed and broadcast all around the world. His compositions have been included in prestigious festivals such as the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Musica Viva Festival, Primavera en La Habana and Third Practice Electro-acoustic Music Festival. He has received many international awards and as well as his electronic music he composes for theatre, film, multimedia productions. Helvacioğlu performs his music worldwide and produces major acts in Turkey. For his latest album, Sub City 2064, Erdem Helvacioğlu (electric guitar, GuitarViol) has joined with Sweden’s Per Boysen (flute, sax, EWI, fretless and dropped-B electrics) to create improvised music that could be the soundtrack to a science fiction horror film. Looping and sophisticated electronics produce deep, intelligent and beautiful cinematic compositions that at times are reminiscent of Stockhausen, Hassell, Eno, NIN and Floyd, but brilliantly transcend those and their many other influences. See also Erdem Helvacioğlu’s previous CD, Wounded Breath.

JOHN CAGE - MELODIES AND HARMONIES    COL LEGNO WWE1CD20292

The pioneering American composer, philosopher, writer and Zen Buddhist John Milton Cage revolutionised music as much as anyone in the 20th century. He is probably best known for his controversial composition 4’33”, whose three movements are performed without playing a single note. He also composed what he termed ‘chance music’, where various elements are left to be decided by chance, and often wrote for non-standard musical instruments, utilising both homemade and ethnic instruments as well as ‘found objects’. His study of Buddhism led him to believe that meditative tranquility should be the goal of his music. For this album of music for violin and keyboard, Annelie Gahl (violin) and Klaus Lang (Fender Rhodes) have interwoven the movements of two Cage works: Six Melodies from 1950 and Thirteen Harmonies from 1985. Cage described the Melodies as a postscript to his String Quartet in Four Parts. Violinist Roger Zahab arranged the Thirteen Harmonies from movements of Cage’s 44 Harmonies - part of his 1976 composition, Apartment House 1776. The melodies are hymn tunes by American composers of the Revolutionary period, such as William Billings, Supply Belcher, Andrew Law and James Lyon, and Zahab selected 13 to reflect the 13 original colonies. The Melodies and Harmonies fit together perfectly together and Klaus Lang has based the pauses in between the tracks on a special procedure inspired by Cage’s method of composing. For the first time, Cage’s work has been interpreted on a Fender Rhodes and violin in this unique experiment resulting in music that is both transformational and joyful. ‘Do we need a celebration? We cannot avoid it, since each thing in life is continuously just that.’ - John Cage.

DAVID MATTHEWS - WINTER PASSIONS      NMC D152

London born David Matthews was, like his younger brother Colin Matthews, also a composer, inspired by the ‘Mahler boom’ in the early 1960s. The works of Gustav Mahler began to enter the regular British repertoire for the first time, providing a tremendous creative impetus for both brothers. After studying classics at classics at Nottingham University and composition with Anthony Milner, David Matthews was helped and encouragemed by Nicholas Maw then for three years was associated with Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival. Not until he was 25 did he produce a work that satisfied him sufficiently to be pronounced his ‘Opus 1’. He has largely avoided teaching, but to support his composing career has done much editorial work and orchestration of film music. He has also written occasional articles and reviews as well a book on Sir Michael Tippett, a composer he admires. This new CD features The Nash Ensemble, conducted by Lionel Friend, in a collection of world premiere recordings of works by Matthews. The composer’s soundworld is rooted in the English romantic tradition of Elgar and Vaughan Williams and this is evident in the dramatic settings of Pushkin (Winter Passions), Shakespeare (Terrible Beauty) and TS Eliot (Marina), all stunningly performed by baritone Stephan Loges and versatile mezzo Susan Bickley. The ravishing Terrible Beauty is scored for mezzo-soprano and seven players (flute, bass clarinet, harp and string quartet) and is largely a setting of Enobarbus’s famous eulogy of Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, describing her progress down the River Cydnus to Tarsus in a gilded barge, attended by servants dressed as sea nymphs and watched by all the citizens of the town. In Winter Passions Matthews conjures up a Russian scene with use of traditional Russian folksong and pizzicato on the strings sounding like the strumming of a balalaika. Other works here include two String Trios and a brilliant Clarinet Quintet. ‘The Nash Ensemble is still the best champion that any composer could hope to have.’ - The Times.

AKKOSAX - AN WERNER PIRCHNER      COL LEGNO 30003

Werner Pirchner is among Austria’s foremost composers of the late 20th century, though he is perhaps still not as widely known as he deserves. His long musical association with AkkoSax has now inspired them to a posthumous tribute to this original and individualistic mind, who was at home as much in the worlds of jazz and theatre as in concert halls. Even many who have never experienced him live are familiar with his music, from the signature tunes he wrote for Ö1, the Austrian cultural radio station. It is fascinating to listen to they way the two instruments, the accordion and the saxophone, complement each other, recording a twofold dialogue: one between the musicians Siggi Haider and Hannes Sprenger, the other between the two of them and Werner Pirchner. He, like the two colleagues who here interpret his music, was always known for his skill in creating an intelligent balance between tradition and an innovative musical approach. These warm, mesmeric sounds are wonderfully evoked by Siggi Haider (accordions, percussions, voices) and Hannes Sprenger (saxophones, percussions, voices). The always adventurous Col Legno label has also released MUSIC FOR CHECKING E-MAILS (Col Legno 20289), a double album featuring electronic music by Wolfgang Mitterer. Born in 1958, Mitterer studied organ, composition and electroacoustics in Vienna and Stockholm. An electronics specialist, he is brilliant on the keyboard and on the slide controls, as well as being one of the Europe’s most innovative composers. His work oscillates between composition and open form, and apart from music for organ and orchestra, a piano concerto and an opera he has produced electronic pieces, conceptualised sound installations, and engaged in collective improvisation with diverse groups, developing a language of extremes, tension and complexity. The pleasure he takes in experimenting leads him to combine contrasting elements in the creation of unpredictable musical events.

EDWIN ROXBURGH - SOLOS AND DUOS      NMC D161

Composer Edwin Roxburgh was born in 1937 in Liverpool. After playing oboe in the National Youth Orchestra, he studied composition with Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music, as well as with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luigi Dallapicolla in Florence. After his studies he became principal oboist of the Sadler’s Wells Opera and taught composition and conducting at the Royal College, where he founded the RCM’s Twentieth Century Ensemble. Together with Leon Goossens he wrote the Menuhin Music Guide for the oboe. He has pursued a distinguished career as a conductor and soloist, specialising in contemporary repertoire, and is currently a visiting teacher at BCU Birmingham Conservatoire. He won a British Composers’ Award for Elegy for Ur and recently published his opera Abelard. The adventurous, sparky and sometimes ethereal works on this CD were inspired by the virtuosic skill of the performers featured on the recording: Lawrence Casserley (electronics), Sulki Yu (violin), Dimitri Murrath (viola) and Marie Macleod (cello). They are joined by the composer himself in his meditative and transcendent work for oboe and electronics, At the Still Point of the Turning World..., in which the sound of the oboe is fed through delay effects initially designed for a performance of Stockhausen’s Solo, here recreated by Lawrence Casserley. The other pieces are Soliloquy 3, Flute Music with an Accompaniment, Soliloquy 2, Soliloquy 4, Aube: a ballet for dancer and percussion, and Duologue for David.

WOUNDED BREATH – ERDEM HELVACIOGLU    AUCOURANT RECORDS AUREC 0899

Wounded Breath, is a collection of five imaginative and rewarding electro-acoustic works as Erdem Helvacioglu manipulates sounds that he generates by playing an acoustic guitar through a series of processors and programs, creating wonderfully atmospheric environments for the listener to explore. Below the Cold Ocean takes us on a dive below the Arctic Ocean with its frozen water and eerily clicking ice. Dance of Fire features the hypnotising sound of fire. In the playful Lead Crystal Marbles we hear the sound of glass marbles dropping, bouncing on the floor then going their separate ways. In the Blank Mirror we see a man's blurred image in the mirror but who is this stranger? In Wounded Breath an elderly lady lies in her death bed in a dim room with her memories, illusions, dreams and last words. This outstanding music takes you on exciting journeys into strangely beautiful and magical places.

ALTERED REALITIES – ERDEM HELVACIOGLU    NEW ALBION NA131

Altered Realities, features solo acoustic guitar and live electronics, all recorded in real-time directly to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) without any overdubs, mixing, editing, post-processing, or the use of previously recorded material. All of the textures were created based only on the acoustic guitar signal with no other sound source used during the recording. Within these textures, there are long sustaining single notes, beautiful shimmering chords and rhythmic clusters. The moment that is recorded is the moment that we hear on this CD’s seven tracks, with imaginative titles such as Bridge to Horizon, Sliding on a Glacier, Dreaming on a Blind Saddle, Pearl Border and Ebony Remains. Simultaneously gentle, wonderfully spacey and melodic, Erdem Helvacioğlu’s adventurous music is a richly rewarding experience.

MAGNAR AM - SONAR      2L 51

SONaR creates a celestial sonic world of harps, strings and angels. Composed and performed specially for the surround sound format, Norwegian composer Magnar Åm’s adventurous, accessible music is a powerful experience that also features the harpist Ellen Sejersted Bødtker, the Oslo kammersolister string-sextet, and singers Hildegrunn Riise and Grex Vocalis. ‘SONaR is a sound signal sent out to create an echo from whatever it may encounter and thus reveal the unknown...The music changes from being a phenomenon which appeals primarily to the mind and imagination to something which evokes a physical experience to a much greater degree.’ - Magnar Åm. Following the Grammy-nominated Divertimenti from 2L, this groundbreaking Hybrid SACD + music Blu-ray box set includes three pieces: vere meininga - concerto for harp and strings; det var mjukt - for soprano and harp; and dette blanke no - concerto for harp and angels. The compact disc looks like a normal CD and plays on all standard players and computers. ‘It made a deep impression through the unique way in which the harp with its sonorous, fragile, naïve, gentle and dramatic qualities is used, providing a dimension that I had always looked for. The electric harp with all its effects carries on a dialogue with its acoustic counterpart, as if the new and the ancient world were melting together.’ - Ellen Sejersted Bødtker. The sound quality is extraordinarily vivid and shows that Blu-ray may be as crucial to the future of audio recording as it is becoming to vision.

BERIO - ORCHESTRAL WORKS       COL LEGNO WWE 1CD 20281

The acclaimed composer and conductor Luciano Berio was born in Oneglia, Italy, in 1925 and studied at the Milan Conservatory before working for the Italian Broadcasting Corporation. He taught in America and Europe, ran the electro-acoustic department of IRCAM in Paris and founded tempo Reale, an institute for new music, in Florence. He was also Musical Director of the newly founded Regional Orchestra of Tuscany, Artistic Director of the Maggio Musicale in Florence and was an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Berio's compositions, noted for experimentation and the use of electronic sounds, are performed regularly throughout the world. Part two of col legno's Wien Modern Edition is dedicated to Luciano Berio orchestral works: Chemins I and IIb, Concerto and Formazioni, which were recorded live at the Wien Modern Festival in 2007. Luciano Berio decided to ‘comment’ on various of his notoriously complex Sequences for solo instruments from an orchestral perspective. Chemins and Chemins IIb are adaptations of the Sequences for harp and viola. In his Concerto for two pianos and orchestra the composer chooses a differentiated and episodic approach to unravel the tangle of relationships between the orchestra’s instruments and the two solo pianos. In Formazioni, Berio completely upsets the traditional arrangement of a classic symphonic orchestra and creates fascinating new sound mixtures in the process. The ‘oscillating inner polyphony’ (Berio) of these mixtures is skillfully unraveled in the pointed and highly differentiated interpretation by Stefan Asbury and the RSO Vienna. These are luminous performances of music by one of the most important composers of the second half of the twentieth century.

LUIGI NONO – PROMETEO      COL LEGNO 20605

The Italian composer and intellectual Luigi Nono was born in Venice in 1924 and was a member of a wealthy artistic family. Nono began music lessons with Gian Francesco Malipiero in 1941 at the Venice Conservatory where, amongst other styles, he acquired knowledge of the Renaissance madrigal tradition. After graduating with a degree in Law from the University of Padua, he was given encouragement in composition by Bruno Maderna and Hermann Scherchen. Together with Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio, Ligeti, Goeyvaerts and Kagel, Luigi Nono wrote some of the twentieth century’s most challenging and music. Nono best work came towards the end of his life after he had been introduced to the Venice-based philosopher, Massimo Cacciari, who began to have an increasing influence on the composer’s thought during the 1980s. Through Cacciari, Nono became immersed in the work of many German philosophers, including Walter Benjamin, whose ideas on history formed the background to the monumental Prometeo. Written in 1984, this ‘tragedia dell’ascolto’, originally conceived for the San Marco in Venice, was premiered in the San Lorenzo in Venice. But it is the second version, which Nono reworked the following year, that has since been widely performed. Its texts were based on various interpretations of the ancient myth of the eternal wanderer, but the intelligibility of the words was less significant, since in music it was the sound of words that was of prime importance. Similarly, Nono conceived music-theatre as a sonic landscape; accordingly Prometeo was subdivided into ‘islands’ of slowly changing performing and listening activity. This landmark recording is the first time Nono’s Prometeo has been captured in surround sound on CD. The 115 page graphic score allows you to comprehend text and music separately as well as together. In addition to the complete text, it comprises a guide to the work and detailed instructions. This double SACD also includes a comprehensive 83-page booklet in German, English and French.

MAX RICHTER – 24 POSTCARDS IN FULL COLOUR    FATCAT RECORDS

Born in 1966, Max Richter trained in composition and piano at Edinburgh University, at the Royal Academy of Music, and with Luciano Berio in Florence. The Richter family moved to the UK from Germany when Max was a young child, leaving the wider part of his family distributed around Germany. This sense of a lack of roots had an effect on his musical formation. After finishing his studies, Richter co-founded the contemporary classical ensemble Piano Circus, where he stayed for ten years, commissioning and performing works by Arvo Pärt, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe and Steve Reich.. Richter was also pro-active in developing the group’s use of live sampling. He has also collaborated with Mercury Prize winner Roni Size on the album In The Mode and produced the acclaimed Vashti Bunyan comeback album, Lookaftering. Richter’s three solo albums to date include the excellent SONGS FROM BEFORE, featuring the distinctive voice of Robert Wyatt reading the words of Haruki Murakami. His latest project, the intriguingly-named ‘24 Postcards In Full Colour’, is an experimental collection of miniatures. The pieces are a series of variations scored for strings, piano and electronics, and is available on limited edition vinyl and as a download only release. His magical music is dazzlingly imaginative yet wonderfully accessible, ranging from ethereally beautiful impressionistic pieces to adventurous, mind-expanding electronica. Richter plays solo piano and his unique musical palette also includes a string quintet, 16 track 2 inch tape, transistors, shortwave radio, vinyl clicks, dust, scratches and rumbles, and electric guitars. Brilliant!

JAMES DILLON - THE SOADIE WASTE   NMC D131

Scottish composer James Dillon was born in 1950 in Glasgow and has sometimes been linked with Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Finnissy as part of the ‘new complexity’ school. He studied art and design, linguistics, piano, acoustics, Indian rhythm, mathematics and computer music, but is self-taught in composition. Honours include first prize in the Huddersfield Festival (1978), the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at Darmstadt (1982) and three Royal Philharmonic Society composition awards, most recently for his Fourth String Quartet. He has taught at Darmstadt and been a guest lecturer and composer at various institutions around the world. Following her acclaimed recording of James Dillon’s Book of Elements (NMC D091), Noriko Kawai returns to NMC - joined by Irvine Arditti and the Arditti Quartet in their first recording for the label. This disc spans Dillon’s career - from the short early piano caprice Dillug-Kefitsah (beautifully played by Kawai) and the phantasmagorical sequence Traumwerk, for violin and piano, to brooding piano duo black/nebulae - with pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi - and piano quintet the soadie waste, subtitled ‘wedding receptions, dances and housie housie’ and evoking a boozy celebration in a dancehall on the outskirts of Glasgow, near where James Dillon grew up. The establishment was built on wasteland that had been a chemical factory. ‘Residual fumes...would seep through the floorboards during a hot dance session,’ Dillon writes, but this quintet is exuberantly physical music, suggesting healthy rowdiness rather than a chemically traumatised populace. This album is full of energetic, highly individual music from one of Britain’s most important contemporary composers, whose influences range from the Rolling Stones and Muddy Waters to Stockhausen and Messiaen.

JOHN CAGE – ONE ⁷ [FROM ONE ¹³] & ONE ⁸   OGREOGRESS

Towards the end of his life, John Cage found himself much in demand for new pieces and with his assistant, Andrew Culver, he developed new software that would enable him to write music more quickly. These final works, written between 1987 and 1992, came to be known as the Number Pieces - each work’s title consists of a number written out as a word and indicating the number of performers for which it was composed. Where there are several works for the same number of performers, Cage would add a superscript numeral. This fifth and final in an exemplary OgreOgress series featuring the complete Number Pieces for strings and/or percussion contains the world premiere recording of Cage’s One⁷ [from One¹³] and is first to include the complete final works for cello. One⁷ serves as a structural basis for the sound material originally intended for One¹³ and One⁸ utilises a curved bow which enables the cellist to sustain beautiful, quiet chords. The other four CDs in the series feature premiere recordings of One⁶ and One¹⁰ (with violinist Christina Fong); Three², Twenty-Three, Six and Twenty-Six (with Christina Fong, percussionist Glenn Freeman and cellist Karen Krummel); Four⁴ (Glenn Freeman brilliantly performs Cage’s final, mesmerising 72-minute work for percussion); One⁴, Four [all versions] and Twenty-Nine (with Fong, Krummel, Freeman and bassist Michael Crawford). These are fine recordings of music by one of the most challenging yet rewarding of Twentieth Century composers.