Especially for Independence Day

Lou Harrison: A Summerfield Set (1988) for solo piano
Nohema Fernandez, Piano (recorded 1989) - Musical Heritage 5169928 rerelease (1990/2005)

Daniel Lentz: Point Conception (1979) for nine pianos
Arlene Dunlap, Piano (recorded 1984) - Cold Blue CB0028 (2009)

Morton Feldman: For Aaron Copland ((1981) for violin solo
Maurizio Barbetti, violin - Stradivarius 33819 (2008)

About Iannis Xenakis, his teacher Olivier Messiaen said: “He is very difficult to define. Firstly he is Greek - there’s nothing to be done about it - that lucidity of spirit, that speed. If you look at the great classical theater of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, these were prodigiously intelligent people but the subjects were horrible… appalling! They are horrendous crimes! There is a certain savageness, and he has a little of it. He has a certain cruelty … yes. Finally what he has done, he has used mathematics, he has used architecture, in order to compose and that has given something which is totally inspired, but is complete outside.Which belongs only to him, Which no one else could have done! That has an impact, a force. That is power.”  (quoted in Xenakis, by Nouritza Matossian, 1986 NY)

We conclude our mini-festival of the music of Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) with some of his most powerful works:

Polytope de Montreal - Sound and light show, music for four identical orchestras (1967)
-  Ens. Ars Nova de l’O.R.T.F, directed by Marius Constant

ST/48 for 48 instruments (1962)
Symphony orchestra of Cologne, Michel Tabachnik  WDR recording

Syrmos for 18 strings (1959)
Ens. Ars Nova de l’O.R.T.F, directed by Marius Constant
-  Edition RZ 1015 (2003)

Palimpsest (1979) for piano, 6 drums, winds, & strings  -  The Society of New Music, Aki Takahashi, piano, Charles Peltz, cond

Mists (1980) for solo piano  -   Aki Takahashi, pno
-  Mode 80 (2006)

For more information about Iannis Xenakis, see:

• Biography and discography at answers.com
• Les Amis de Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis: Achorripsis for 21 instruments (1956)  -  Ens. Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine de Paris, Konstantin Simonovitch   
Iannis Xenakis: Terretektorh for 88 instruments (1966)  -   Orchestre Philharmonique d l’ORTF, Charles Brück  -  Editions RZ 1015 (2003)

Erkki-Sven Tüür:  Lighthouse  (1997)
Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Dennis Russell Davies
ECM New 1673 (1999) 

Giacinto Scelsi: String Quartet #2 (1961)
Berner Quartet (WDR 1979)
Editions RZ 1014

Iannis Xenakis:  A la Mémoire de Witold Lutoslawski (1994)
Ensemble ST-X - Mode 56 (1996)

Iannis Xenakis: Eonta (1964)
Ensemble ST-X, Justin Rubin, piano - Mode 53 (1996)

Morton Feldman:  Five Pianos (1972)
Helena Bugallo, Amy Williams, Amy Briggs, Benjamin Engeli, Stefan Wirth
Wergo 6708 (2009)

I began by finding myself humming tones while improvising on the piano. The vocal or humming sounds were quite short, and as the piano sounds lingered, I began to hear other pianos, other humming. Two, three, four pianos were too transparent - the fifth piano became like the pedal blur needed to complete the overall sound I was after. … A recurring ostinato heard in all the pianos (the figure never repeats itself in the same tempo) is another aspect of a “surface” appearing and dissolving into this almost flat, Byzantine canvas.  -  Morton Feldman quoted in the program notes for the American premiere of his FIVE PIANOS in 1972.

Iannis Xenakis:  Xas (1987); Échange (1989)
ST-X Ensemble Xenakis USA - Mode 56 (1996)

Edgard Varese: Ameriques (1921), transcription for 2 pianos 8 hands by the composer and reconstructed by Helena Bugallo  -  Helena Bugallo, Amy Williams, Amy Briggs, Benjamin Engeli, pianos - Wergo 6708 (2009)

Iannis Xenakis would be 87 today.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) : Tetora 1990; Ergma (1994)
Jack Quartet   Mode 209 (2009)

Per Nørgård (1932-): Symphony #7 (2006)
Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard, cond
Da Capo 6.220547 (2008)

Xenakis: from 6 Chansons pour piano, 1-3 (1950)
Aki Takahashi, Mode 80

Iannis Xenakis: Dikhthas (1979)    —   Jane Peters, violin; Aki Takahashi, piano
Mode 80 (2006)

John Cage:  Melodies 5,6  (1950);     Eight Whiskus (1985)
Maurizio Barbetti, violin; Rossella Spinosa, piano
Stradivarius STR 33819 (2009)

Cage: Music for Piano 55-63, 78-84   (1956)  —   Herbert Henck, piano
editions RZ 4004  (2003)

Cage: Sculptures Musicales (1989)  -   The Chance Operations Collective of Kalamazoo recorded May 1, 2009
To be released on OgreOgress - first radio broadcast anywhere

Here is the complete score to Sculptures Musicales:

Sculptures Musicales  “Sounds
lasting and leaving from different
points and forming a sounding
sculpture which lasts”  (Marcel
Duchamp)  An exhibition of
several, one at a time, beginning
and ending “hard-edge” with
respect to the surrounding
“silence”, each sculpture within
the same space the audience is.
From one sculpture to the next,
no repetition, no variation. For
each a minimum of three constant
sounds each in a single envelope.
No limit to their number. Any
lengths of lasting. Any lengths of
non-formation. Acoustic and/or
electronic.
John Cage 1989

From ARRAY MUSIC 25 MINIATURES:
Ann Southam:  Passing Through;  Robert W. Stevenson: Present;    Linda Catlin Smith: Passacaglia;   John Mark Sherlock: Necklace  —     Array Music, Artifact 025 (2001)

Claude Vivier: Et je reverrai cette ville étrange (1981)
James Tenney: Harmonium #5 (1978)
Array Music, Artifact 002 (1988)

more from ARRAY MUSIC 25 MINIATURES:
Anthony Genge: Intermezzo;    Wendy Prezament: Recollection;    Mark Hand: Palimpsest;    Marjan Mozetich: Time to Leave

Performances by the ARRAY MUSIC ensemble from Toronto.

Marc Blitzstein: Solo Piano Works:
Scherzo “Bourgeois at Play” 1930
Piano Sonata 1927
Piano Percussion Music 1929
Sarah Cahill, piano    Other Minds 1017 (2009)

First Life is a collection of world premiere recordings of hitherto virtually unknown compositions for solo piano and for string quartet by American composer Marc Blitzstein. Three works for solo piano are performed by pianist and composers’ muse Sarah Cahill, and two compositions, comprising Blitzstein’s complete known output for string quartet, feature the Del Sol String Quartet. “The populist political ideals Marc Blitzstein had embraced by the late 1930s in such works as The Cradle Will Rock led him to abandon the more abstract language of his early chamber music as too inaccessible,” says Amirkhanian, “but to our ears these pieces, which sat on a shelf for over 80 years, are beautifully crafted and appealinglyexperimental for their time. We find them exciting and had to record them because their contrarian voice clearly belongs to an Other Mind!” Amirkhanian’s relationship with Stephen and Christopher Davis, Blitzstein’s nephews and the executors of his estate, enabled OM to gain access to the still unpublished scores, which have lain in the archive of the Blitzstein estate since his untimely death in 1964 at the age of 58.

Written before the premiere of his legendary political musical The Cradle Will Rock and his highly-regarded opera Regina, Blitzstein’s chamber music unquestionably deserves a wider audience. Yet these scores, by the only American to study composition with both Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger, are largely unknown and have rarely been played. Recorded at Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California, First Life continues an effort by OM to shed light on these forgotten treasures, an unknown aspect of Blitzstein’s genius.

Arvo Pärt: In Principio (2003)
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir & Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
Tönu Kaljuste, cond.   ECM New Series 2050 (2009)

“His music makes the basic human need for a link between aesthetics, ethics and spirituality clear and perceivable – a need so often subordinated to politics and economics in our society.” Thus the words with which Arvo Pärt was awarded the International Bridge Prize of the twin cities Görlitz and Zgorzelec in 2007. His new CD, ‘In Principio’, demonstrates the extent to which his more recent music manifests this very link. Twenty-five years ago ECM launched its New Series with Pärt’s Tabula Rasa. Now its twelfth Pärt album, again produced by Manfred Eicher, presents six compositions of various lengths spanning a period of almost ten years. Four of the pieces appear here for the first time on disc. The meticulous performances were recorded by Estonian ensembles under the baton of Tōnu Kaljuste, a conductor well-versed in Pärt’s music for many years, and accompanied by the composer every step of the way.

The range is wide: Pärt creates masterly syntheses of the expressive resources he has pursued ever since his personal style emerged in the mid-1970s. The intimate and the monumental co-exist; streams of chords flow towards dramatic eruptions. The inflection of his pieces is always based on their underlying emotive significance. In Principio is a five-movement setting of the opening verses of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word”. The elegiac orchestral piece “La Sindone” conjures up the image of Christ on the Shroud of Turin. “Cecilia, vergine romana”, written to celebrate the sacred year 2000 in Rome, is devoted to the martyrdom of the patron saint of music. A serene plea for peace, memories of a deceased friend and contemplation of the ‘peaks and troughs’ of life: these are the emotional way-stations of the three relatively short pieces here, encapsulating the magic of Pärt’s music.

Charles Ives: Five Songs
The Sea of Sleep  1903
Like a Sick Eagle  1920
Watchman 1913
Feldeinsamkeit   1898
Romanzo di Central Park  1911
Susan Narucki, soprano  Donald Berman, piano
New World Records  80680 (2008)

 Charles Ives composed nearly 200 songs throughout his life. Wiley Hitchcock, in the thorough introduction to his 2004 critical edition 129 Songs, described the Ives song canon as “the contents of a kind of scrapbook or commonplace book or chapbook, or even a desk drawer. Into such a receptacle Ives tossed irregularly, if not casually, his reactions —in the form of songs—to memories, personalities, places, events, discoveries, ideas, visions, and fantasies in his life.” Whether popular tale or personal reflection, this concept of the songs as memorabilia is realized in a most powerful way: the songs emotionally and viscerally evoke memory. Captured memories—real or idealized, distant or near—are the materials for the music. From cosmopolitan incident (Ann Street) to pastoral stroll (The Housatonic at Stockbridge) Ives’s songs describe a range of experience: a child’s playtime, a commuter’s observations, a courter’s hope. His songs exhibit reverence for the populace and pop culture, daring adventure, and family devotion; life and death. This new recording of 27 songs features superlative performances by soprano Susan Narucki, renowned for her authoritative interpretations of contemporary American music, and Donald Berman, whose recordings of Ives’s piano music have been critically acclaimed. 

Chen Yi:  Tibetan Tunes (2007); Happy Rain on a Spring Night (2004)
Third Angle New Music Ensemble, New World Records 80691  (2009)

Peter Garland: Old Men of the Fiesta (1990)
The Peter Garland Ensemble, Tzadik 8059 (2008)

Tonight we repeat a program heard last year:

Ann Southam: Glass Houses
Gavin Bryars: After Handel’s Vesper
… Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano; Wellspringe WEL0008 (2008)

Valentin Silvestrov: Bagatells I-XIII (2005)
… Valentin Silvestrov, piano; ECM New Series 1988 (2007)

Peter Garland: String Quartet #2 “Crazy Cloud”  (1994)
Apartment House Quartet - Cold Blue CB0032 (2009)

Alan Hovhaness: Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra (1954)
Premier recording: Martin Berkofsky, Atakan Sari, pianos
Globalis Symphony Orchestra, Konstantin Krimets, cond.
Black Box BBM1103 (2004)
This work had to wait 50 years for a first performance and recording!

Horatiu Radulescu: Third Piano Sonata (1999) “you will endure forever”
Ortwin Stürmer, CPO999880 (2004)

Ann Southam: Commotion Creek, Spatial View of Pond 1, Pond Life I-IV  (1983-2008)
Christina Petrowska Quilico  CMC CD 14109 (2009)

A night of Cold Blue Music.

Cold Blue was started by composer Jim Fox in the early 1980s (in the days of vinyl), based in Venice, California. Through a series of 10-inch eps and 12-inch lps, the label released music by Daniel Lentz (Point Conception, After Images, etc), Peter Garland (The Matachin Dances and Three Strange Angels), Barney Childs (Clay Music), Chas Smith (Santa Fe and Beatrix), James Tenney, Ingram Marshall, Harold Budd, Michael Byron, Michael Jon Fink, Rick Cox, and others. By the time of its demise a few years later, Cold Blue was recognized by many new-music critics as a label with a unique focus—particularly West Coast minimalism and post-minimalism.  Reemerging after a fifteen-year hiatus, Cold Blue releases five to six new CDs per year. coldbluemusic.com

Kyle Gann: Long Night  (1981)
Sarah Cahill, pianos  -  Cold Blue CB0019 (2005)

Jim Fox: Last Things  (1987)
Marty Walker, bass clarinet, Chas Smith, pedal steel guitar, Rick Cox, glass guitar,
Jim Fox piano and electronic keyboards
Recorded 1987, Los Angeles   -  Cold Blue CB0001 (2000)

David Mahler: La Cuidad de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles (1985)
Bryan Pezzone, piano - Cold Blue CB0008 (2002)

You can hear a live performance of this truly evocative piece by David Mahler performed by Sarah Cahill at the Other Minds New Music Seance concert in 2007. It’s on the »RadiOM.org website.

Olivier Messiaen:  Chronochromie (1960)
SWR Symphony Orch of Baden-Baden/Freiburg, Sylvan Cambreling, con - Hänssler Classics  (2002)

Messiaen wrote that…
“CHRONOCHROMIE is based on two fundamental elements: sound and time. The material specifying time or rhythm, by far the most important, uses thirty-two different durations; they are subject to symmetrical permutations that constantly follow the same rule. We hear the permutations thus achieved now alone, now fragmented, now in a ratio of 3:3 superimposed.

The material specifying sound or melody uses bird songs from France, Sweden, Japan, and Mexico, as well as the sounds of waterfalls in the French Alps. The extremely wide-ranging mixtures of tones and timbers remain subject to the time values that are emphasized by coloration. The color thus serves to structure the chronological sections.”

Robert Erickson: Auroras (1985)
Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, cond  -   New World Records 80682 (2008)

Erickson wrote:
“I awakened at about 4.30am to the sound of birds, lots of them, varied voices, including some that were new to me. They were concentrated in shrubs and trees surrounding a large fountain area. There were enough birds, hundreds, to produce textures of orchestral size and density, all singing against the sort of silent background that, in modern times, is becoming very rare. I hadn’t heard birds against such silent backgrounds since I was a boy, perhaps that was the trigger that brought bird orchestra, things divine, living and dying, closer together, to make a ball of feeling in my belly that was the whole non-verbal source of the musical action of AURORAS.”

Arvo Pärt: Mein Weg (My Path)(1994)
    Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Tonu Kaljuste, cond  -  ECM New 2050 (2009)

The title is from a poem by  Edmond Jabes:

My path has long hours,
jolts and pains.
My path has peaks and sea-troughs,
sand and sky.
Mine or thine.