Many observers have suggested that in John Cage's late "number pieces" it's the players, rather than the music itself, that carry the performance. The score for Five3, after all, simply consists of bits of music-- single notes or short phrases-- bracketed by a starting time on one side and the range of time for completing the bit of music on the other. This piece, then, is a 40-minute stretch of quiet held tones punctuated by silences, and the performance is phenomenal. Trombonist Monique Buzzarté and the Arditti members often play microtones apart, with impossible intensity. The Arditti has recorded lots of Cage, and it shows: their bowstrokes are as clear and unwavering as Cage's line drawings. With so much pianissimo playing, you hear the light friction of bow against string, and bow changes are absolutely seamless. This is a stunning addition to Mode's ongoing Complete John Cage Edition, for which this is the 19th disc. --Sarah Cahill, ClassicsToday.com

Joan La Barbara is a long recognized pioneer of extended vocal techniques and champion of new music. She emerged from the New York Downtown scene to perform in the ensembles of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, including the premiere of Glass' "Einstein on the Beach." Composer/Vocalist Joan La Barbara has created a rich body of experimental works, many initially produced on analog tape. This collection includes a first release of the award-winning CYCLONE plus two LP reissues offered here remixed to her original surround concept: as lightning comes, in flashes explores a vast array of La Barbara’s signature extended vocal techniques; Autumn Signal is a rare example of the composer’s work with Buchla synthesizer for spatialization as well as modification of vocals. 96khz/24-bit transfers were made from the original multi-track analog tapes. New stereo and surround mixes were then created under the supervision of the composer. On the Bluray edition: The stereo soundtrack is presented in uncompressed 24-bit PCM audio. The surround versions are presented in 24-bit 5.1 Surround Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio..

“Memory in Motion: Percussion in Surround” was a research project developed to examine how percussionists memorize musical actions within ensembles. As part of this research, director Aiyun Huang commissioned new works to compliment selected existing repertoire. Zihua Tan wrote “Sorites” to compliment Iannis Xenakis’ “Persephassa” and alcides lanza wrote “mnais mnemes” to compliment his own earlier composition “sensor VI.” In both cases, the composers were asked to use the identical setup and notational system as that of the existing works. By sharing this common DNA, these unique compositions synergistically flow together to form an unusually powerful listening experience. “Persephassa” is a classic of the percussion repertoire for 6 spatialized percussionists surrounding the audience. This, along with Tan’s “Sorites” make for extraordinary listening in surround, with the listener placed in the center of the circular ensemble as acoustic sounds often ricochet or spin around the listener. The recording on this Mode release accurately places each percussionist in the soundstage (in the stereo version as well as the surround). Mâche’s “Aera” is also for 6 percussionists. Using tuned gongs, vibraphones, marimbas, tubular bells, and timpani as the main colors in this 20-minute work, Mâche directs our ears to hear the inner resonance of these instruments and how the timbres and harmonies mingle and evolve when combinations of instruments shift. Lanza’s two works are scored for percussion quartet. “sensor VI” was inspired by the first moon-landing by the Apollo astronauts in 1969. Lanza chose to reference the devices that sensed and transmitted the astronauts’ life-signs through space to technicians on the ground, and the relation these instruments have to the body's sense organs. His “mnais mnemes” draws formal and textural inspiration from freely-derived characteristics of the mnais mneme, a unique dragonfly found in China — its very elongated cylindrical body contrasts strongly with its large head and enormous glassy spherical eyes.

“Working with forces unknown to me has always been an exciting challenge,” says Elliott Sharp, “especially when those forces are in the form of younger musicians, highly skilled and enthusiastic.” For his work with the musicians of the Veni Academy, he chose three previously composed works that would be easily adaptable to a large ensemble whose instrumentation was not the result of prior design plus one newly composed for the occasion. The chosen pieces were based on well-defined processes that made use of instant decision-making on the part of both the players and the conductor, and finally, some graphic notation. Composed in 2003 for string quartet, The Dispersion of Seeds uses a simple algorithm of arpeggiation of nine chords throughout its arc to create shifting verticalities. The piece would be different with every performance yet would retain its distinct identity. The composition Flexagons is based on permutations of composed fragments ordered in time with instructions on how to flex and fold them. Augmenting the flex is the possibility of players “popping out” with short improvised statements that may be acted upon by the other players and thereby revealing another facet. The Hidden Variable is a suite of graphic scores originally conceived for solo guitar using “alternate bows” to generate sounds on the guitar. Palimpsest was composed for the occasion and a world premiere. Historically, a palimpsest manuscript could be reused by scraping or erasing the text. While the removal of the original texts might be quite thorough, elements of the original items might still be evident, whether explicitly or subliminally, creating a “palimpsest.” Here Sharp’s "original texts" are sample measures taken from previous scores, compiled as raw materials in this new work, superimposed on the now-erased substrate, the “manuscript.”

Mode’s Radulescu Edition, curated with Radulescu’s widow Catherine Marie Tunnell and his publisher Lucero Press, continues with a collection of his works for organ and works with cello. Radulescu’s complete organ works are performed here by German organist Christoph Maria Moosmann, a long-time Radulescu collaborator with a great understanding of his music and sonic goals. Some of the works were written for or dedicated to him. Further definitive recordings are guaranteed by performances from cellist Catherine Marie Tunnell, Radulescu’s widow and the director of Lucero Press. The organ and its interaction with its acoustic environment compliments Radulescu’s “spectral music” palette and what he referred to as “sound plasma”— a special state of sound beyond equal temperament. "Intimate Rituals III" is presented in its version for cello and “sound icons.” During 1965-69, Radulescu had transformed his Bösendorfer grand piano into a kind of harp, putting it vertically on its side and without cover, naming it sound icon. The strings are tuned spectrally, played with a V-form bow of horse hair or with other objects like coins, spheres etc. (The keyboard is not used at all). Due to the special tuning and the bowing technique, if one just touches a string all other strings begin to resonate, creating a rich harmonic halo around each sound. In 1985 Radulescu, together with Petra Junken, recorded two improvisations, each of them on two sound icons. The superimposition of those tapes is used here to accompany Tunnell’s cello.

Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013), the grand old man of French electroacoustic music, did not write much music for tape with live performers. Among them is “Stries” for the unusual combination of three live synthesizer players and tape. Until recently, “Stries” had not been played live for some 30 years. This is the first complete recording, only part of it had been previously released on LP on the INA/GRM label. “Stries” was written for the three synthesizer players of the Paris-based electroacoustic trio TM+, Yann Geslin, Laurent Cuniot and Denis Dufour, founded at the INA/GRM. Over the span of the ensemble’s lifetime, TM+ used a range of different instruments — analog synthesizers in the late 1970s and early digital synthesizers in the mid-1980s — and amassed a repertoire of about 40 compositions written especially for them. Fortunately, Yann Geslin, of the INA/GRM, archived the original score by Parmegiani, as well as the parts for the instrumentalists. Also in GRM’s archives was the original analog reel-to-reel tape for the piece, as well as the analog 8-track recordings from the recording session. Armed with this material, the electronic music trio of Colette Broeckaert, Martin Lorenz and Sebastian Berweck, together with Yann Geslin, recreated the piece with the aim of bringing it back to the stage as well as producing generic scores that could help get the piece into the repertoire of many instrumentalists. Their work is realized on this release.

Australian composer Thomas Meadowcroft grew up at a time when Australians viewed their physical distance to supposed cultural roots as immense whether to the high culture of Europe or the popular culture of the U.S. Meadowcroft has embraced this critically and made it the focus of his work. Instead of looking for ways to join other musical traditions and histories, his music takes the Australian experience of distance as its central subject matter. Part of it is the exploration or evocation of feelings of alienation, the lack of context and the falling short. In these pieces this means the use of junk and the embrace of instruments of middle-class domestic music making mostly excluded from art music by definition: electric organs, drum machines, plastic recorders, worn out tapes, etc. Instruments that not only have strong attachments to place and function, but which also tend to enact some kind of musical rationalization to work. The cheap drum machines in Thomas’ work are not manipulated or transformed; they need to play their patterns for you to know what they are. Speak Percussion has shaped the sound of 21st century Australian percussion music through the creation and presentation of ambitious arts projects. Lauded as a leader in the fields of experimental and contemporary classical music, Speak has been redefining percussion through a multi-disciplinary and post-instrument-practice.

CAGE – SA TIE – FELDMAN – TAKAHASHI sums up the focus of this album. All of these works by Cage are influenced by Satie. Cage’s friend and colleague Morton Feldman made an arrangement of Cage’s solo piano “Cheap Imitation” for a trio of piano, flutes/piccolo and glockenspiel. Feldman’s admiration for the pianist Aki Takahashi caused him to gift this arrangement to her. And, full circle, we have the repertoire of this album. The major discovery is Feldman’s arrangement of Cheap Imitation for this very Feldmanesque instrumental ensemble. It is unknown why Feldman made this arrangement in 1980. Knowing of Takahashi’s reputation as a pianist specializing in new music, Feldman had invited her to be an artist in residence at the university where he taught. When she was leaving, Feldman gave a musical score to Takahashi as a gift. It was a copy of John Cage’s solo piano piece Cheap Imitation with annotations by Feldman. He told her that this was an instrumental version of this piece: flute, piano, and glockenspiel.

Classical Music

Friedrich Jaecker studied with György Ligeti at the Hochschüle für Musik in Cologne. Jaecker is deeply expert in the music of Feldman and Scelsi, both of whom influence his music. American composer and instrument builder Harry Partch developed a system of just intonation, in which the exact tuning of spectral sounds and their inversions are made possible. In the composition Harry’s Dream, each of the thirty-three musicians is responsible for a single note to be played on a tuned wine glass. Each glass — tuned precisely to the (microtonal) cent — helps to build a tremendous “glass harp,” in which the listener is enveloped by a mass of sounds, moving from dense to transparent, from fast to slow. The glass tones change as the musicians are intermittently asked to hum and sing, contributing additional colors and intensity in the overall sound. The cosmic theme, the just intonation and the unique instrumentation of Harry’s Dream, offers a complete contrast to the intimacy portrayed in Bagatellen & Studien, written for solo piano—the father of all well tempered instruments. Composed between 2007 and 2012, each of the twenty-four miniatures represents its own unique, pointed style. In their short, sketchy lightness, the musical ideas evolve as quickly as they are presented. The contrasting profile of the Bagatelles and Studies — compared to Preludes and Fugues — becomes especially clear if they are alternately performed by two pianists at two pianos, as they are presented on this recording. The composition paradis (paradise), written in 2013, unites both instruments, forming a delicate array of sounds mostly within the pianos’ upper octaves. The composition is extremely thinned out —even to the point that only a single canonic line often remains. Even the sound of the hardly noticed or graciously tolerated piano hammers even play an important role in the composition.

This quintet was gathered by John Heward to open the Guelph Jazz Festival in September 2014. The recording is from a concert given in Montreal several days before the festival opening. The music is free improvisation: no score, just a resolution to make music. It was a special occasion to have Heward and legendary bassist Barre Philips, both at the age of 80 at the time of the recording, at the core of the quintet. They are joined by a stellar group of long-time Heward collaborators: Lori Freedman, Joe McPhee and Dana Reason. The release of this record is sadly a memorial tribute to John Heward (1934–November 2018). Heward, from Montreal, was an internationally recognized percussionist in free jazz as well as a renowned painter and sculptor. He was an influential figure in the development of abstraction and improvisation in both visual art and music.

Scelsi: Piano Works, Vol. 1

Includes work(s) by Morton Feldman. Ensemble: Barton Workshop.

The main focus of Gerald Eckert’s music is frequently not placed on a centrally triggered event or center of action, but on what has been triggered by this event and how the consequences are subsequently developed. In other words, he focuses his sights on what an impulse is followed by. For außen, von tief innen [outside, from deep within], the consistent subtle and quiet tonal structure of the work is the fine delineation of multiphonics in bass flute and double bass clarinet alongside the tonal differentiation in the violoncello part. These three layers produce an expressive spectrum whose progress repeatedly hints towards an additional electro-acoustic level, despite the fact that all tonal spectrums are generated purely through the acoustic musical instruments. In absence — traces éloignées [Engl.: absences – distant traces], the disparate tonal worlds of four piccolos and two percussion parts collide with each other. The effort to create a quiet sound surface for the piccolos leads to a floating momentum comporting itself in inverse fashion. This creates a lightness in which the physical concentration and great effort in the complexity of the sound production are not audible. In the third work featured on this album, the richness of sound and tonal coloring is ultimately given an additional facet through the human voice. In Annäherung an Petrarca [Approach to Petrarch] for four voices, flute and violoncello, the four vocal parts—soprano, alto, tenor and bass— form their own subtle sound body. The text primarily serves as the initiator of multifarious tonal effects. The process experienced by the past in den angestoßenen Augen der Steine [the struck eyes of stones] for violin, double bass clarinet, tape and live electronics stands between that which has taken place and that which is now taking place, the recollection of this in the “present” moment and its gradual process of forgetting in the future.

It may seem odd to some to find a release of Debussy’s music on Mode Records. But actually not, for Debussy is one of the forefathers of the developments of the second part of the 20th century. This recording of the complete Preludes by Haydée Schvartz had its genesis during her studies with pianist and new music specialist Yvar Mikhashoff. Mikhashoff intrigued Schvartz with the titles of the Preludes, which Debussy curiously placed at the end of each. The lavishly illustrated booklet’s texts are written by Debussy scholar Denis Herlin. He delves into Debussy’s life, the Preludes, and their titles, while the booklet contains images referencing these titles. Bonus tracks include the song “Ain’t it funny what a difference a few hours make” from the musical “The Yankee Consul” which Debussy quotes in “Minstrels.” And an alternate take of "Des pas sur la neige," showing two very different interpretations of that Prelude.

Argentine pianist Haydée Schvartz is already known on Mode Records, having released two previous albums with the label. She is active in new music as well as classical solo and chamber music repertoire and as a soloist with orchestras. Schvartz participated in the Argentinian premiere of John Cage’s "Europera 5" and played the role of Clara Schumann in Gerardo Gandini’s opera "Liederkreis" at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She presented the complete piano works of Luciano Berio for the first time in Argentina and Mexico.

REVIEW:

This most welcome collection of the complete Debussy Préludes, performed by Argentine pianist Haydée Schvartz, and issued by the Mode label, was recorded at the New England Conservatory of Music’s Jordan Hall in the summer of 2003. From a purely sonic perspective, it is a glorious achievement, with the piano reproduced in sound both natural and arresting in its impact. The tone is full, rich, beautiful, and encompassing a grand dynamic range. There is also ample detail, but without any sense of artificial spotlighting. And we are fortunate that the recording/production team achieved such superlative results, because Haydée Schvartz’s renditions of the Debussy Préludes deserve them to the fullest.

-- Fanfare