Knowing his earlier work, one might expect a certain amount of ironic and subversive wit with any of Mauricio Kagel’s pieces, but this new Naxos issue is full of deadly serious stuff, and all the more welcome for it.

There was always more to Kagel’s art than just jokes, and this set of works show him in the context of broad canvasses, from the Mahlerian orchestral song-cycle form of Duodramen, to the double chorus and full orchestra of Liturgien. Szenario was conceived as a stand-alone concert piece, but has since become associated with the Luis Buñuel/Salvador Dalí silent film Le chien andalou of 1928. The tape part of the score consists of animal noises, with of course a whining, and later a barking dog. These sound samples could have been better, coming over rather distorted and tinny, rather than threatening and aggressive where required. The juxtaposition of sometimes eloquent strings and animal sounds is a little uneasy as well, with the extra noises only cropping up now and again – their relevance not entirely clear without any visual references. Nevertheless, there is an unremitting and pungent weight to the march-like rhythm which is a constant backdrop to some colourful string writing. Kagel can’t resist the occasional Wagner quote, but this work has all of the pregnant atmosphere one should expect from good film music – intentional or not.

Duodramen opens immediately with a post-romantic, operatic sense of drama. Looking at the libretto (available online via a link provided on the CD label) one receives the impression less of a coherent story, more an association of ideas and disparate characters – names such as Casanova, Alma Mahler, Henry Ford and Cosima Wagner inhabiting the score and meeting each other in strange and impossible relationships. The text is in German, but has an English translation on the web-page. There is a great deal of complex detail and dramatic context from beginning to end in this piece, giving it an intensity and resonance which I found quite stimulating. That is not to say that there are no moments of repose, and there are indeed some passages of remarkable orchestral colour – chillingly suggestive or vibrantly picturesque – no doubt helped by the addition of percussion and winds, I found the images conjured in this score in many ways to be far more vivid than the previous Szenario. The brutal intimidation of male over female doesn’t make for easy listening, but then, neither is Wozzeck.

Playing, singing and recordings are all excellent on this disc, and this remains true of the final live performance of Liturgien. Referring once again to the online page, the words are all taken from existing religious texts, the source for each of which also being included in detail. The language used is Latin, which for many will soften the impact of having ‘Alleluia’ standing close to ‘Allah is great!’ There is a ritual nature to the music which suits this intentional levelling of symbolism, and I sense traces of Britten, Martin, Stravinsky, Penderecki, Szymanowski – names whose stamp on religious musical expression, if not necessarily as ambiguous as here, at least invariably bears a strong humanist element.

This piece has an other-worldly, magical quality which is something I have always valued in Kagel, and am delighted to find existing in his larger-scale work. If Duodramen is a drama on a private, intimate scale, Liturgien is very much a public statement. No-one can ignore the significance of religious text, and neither is it possible to ignore the idea of effectively taking religion and mixing its writings in the waste-bin of a shredder. This music has all of the seriousness and weight to carry Kagel’s message of homogeneity. While revelling in this work’s spell it was also nice for me to come across some familiar names to one who works at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague – I shall never forget Wout Oosterkamp’s warm encouragement as a teacher, or some performances and workshops by Romain Bischoff’s amazing Vocal Laboratory.

Originally recordings by Saarbrücken Radio, Naxos has made a sound move in releasing these recordings – conducted by the composer, and unlikely to be repeated or bettered any time soon. 2006 is Kagel’s 75th jubilee, but no mention of this is made in the booklet, neither is there any suggestion that this is to be part of any series or collection. I would say there is room for such an edition – especially on the strength of this release.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

The 1960s were a period of revolution in classical vocal composition, a time of re-inventing and re-creating the classical voice's sound world that inspired the generation of composers featured on this album. Spear-headed by such imaginative singers as Cathy Berberian and Michiko Hirayama, and inspired by the simultaneous developments in Early Music, technology and an awareness of world music singing styles, the long-established Bel canto singing tradition was extended in new, imaginative and extraordinarily virtuosic ways. This collection is widely diverse in style from the simple (yet so complex) simple vocals by the two American composers, to a variety of extended-technique songs by the notoriously modernist Europeans, Kagel, Scelsi, Bussotti, Nono, Berio, and Castliglioni. fSara Stowe is one of Britain's most versatile and inventive performers with a repertoire ranging from medieval song to the present day. She began studying as a prize-winning harpsichordist and piano scholar at the Royal College of Music. On leaving she decided to pursue singing and studied in Italy where she sang for Luciano Berio and studied Scelsi's vocal music with Michiko Hirayama. In Britain Sara's performances include work with The Academy of Ancient Music, New London Consort, Sirinu, James Wood and the Taverner Consort.

When it was first heard in 1962, Mauricio Kagel’s organ piece Improvisation Ajoutée created a scandal. The cause was clearly the sounds the organist and his two assistants were required to produce in addition to the sounds of the instrument – speaking, coughing, laughing, whistling, clapping, and above all loud groans and shouts. There is a further revolutionary innovation in “Improvisation ajoutée”: the two assistants arrange the organ’s registration, and even have a system of their own in the score. As a result, there are very fast shifts in registration and color, which follow their own rhythm and are independent of the organist’s score. The sound world of Kagel’s second work for organ, the Fantasie für Orgel mit Obbligati, is less complex. However, Kagel gave the new work a social, cultural, and theatrical subtext in which the borders between “art” and “life” are crossed more resolutely, thereby establishing an entirely new type of complexity. The organ part is here supplemented by two tape recordings that acoustically depict the organist’s working day, somewhat like an audio film. Dominik Susteck reflects on his experiences with Kagel’s organ works. In the spirit of Kagel, Susteck takes the chance material of the letters of Kagel’s name – K-A-G-E-L – as a challenge to his fantasy, and the titles that capture the basic ideas of the five improvisations have a “kagelesque” quality.

In 2013 a group of Krakow-based instrumentalists shared the stage as part of the European Workshop for Contemporary Music, conducted by maestro Rudiger Bohn. Having then played together at Darmstadt's Internationale Ferienkurse fur Nee Musik, the musicians established an independent body. A couple of events held in a community center by one of the town's exit roads and in a then neglected theater marked the beginnings of Spoldzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble, a group who specializes in performing new music. This is the ensemble's first entirely self-curated and self-produced album. It includes compositions which shaped the group's identity.