Classical Music

Classical Music

Multi-channel electronic works in Surround Sound

Morton Subotnick was a phenomenon in the late '60s, the first composer to write substantial works for synthesizer that had a wide audience. He has been mentor to generations of composers, and his influence is so pervasive that it would be impossible to trace completely - the electronica movement, for one, reveres him.

This release brings together two of his classic analog electronic works which were previously only available on LP. The DVD allows you to experience these works "spatially" in your own home - in high-definition sound!

SPECIAL FEATURES:

* 24-bit remastering from the original analog master tapes.
* Newly remixed for Surround Sound by the composer.
* Sidewinder is presented with a liquid light show created for the work by Tony Martin. Martin - infamous for his light shows in the '60s in San Francisco at the Fillmore West and New York's Electric Circus for bands like the Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds and the Grateful Dead - is a long-time collaborator with Subotnick.
* Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround encoding for the standard video side (playable on all DVD players).
* Dedicated DVD-Audio 5.1 Surround side.
* CD version contains the two electronic pieces in new dedicated stereo mixes by the composer.
* Liner notes by renowned electronic composer Curtis Roads.

The DVD includes additional video:

* Subotnick and Tony Martin in conversation about their histories and collaborations (about 60 minutes).
* Subotnick speaks about his childhood through early years of composing (about 30 minutes).
* Documentary showing Tony Martin's process to create the liquid light show for Sidewinder.

Classical Music

Pianist Aki Takahashi follows up her acclaimed first disc of Xenakis piano works with this second volume, this time works for piano with instruments.

The artist and New York City resident Art Spiegelman drew the comic board book in the Shadow of No Towers immediately after the September 11th attacks.

Volume 3 of Morton Subotnick's Electronic Works contains the last of the analog multi-channel tape pieces to be released on DVD: '4 Butterflies', created on the Buchla synthesizer, previously only released as a stereo LP. It is presented with the visuals that were projected during it's early performances in the 1970s. These original 16mm films have been newly transferred and restored for this DVD.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Also available on DVD. Violin and viola players whisper over their instruments. A guitarist waits with the closest attention for the moment to make a gesture we might easily have missed. The tuba player rises to go over to the open piano, there to send sounds echoing into its interior. Two cellists, bowing with heavy pressure down near the tailpiece, produce an urgent rasping. From the timpanist comes the sudden fortissimo that seems to shock the music to a standstill... Renowned German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s music is expressive in extraordinary ways, requiring the performers to play their instruments via unusual techniques, making for both compelling listening and viewing. Lachenmann performs in and supervises these recordings with Ensemble Signal, one of America’s leading New Music ensembles. In addition to performing as narrator in "...Zwei Gefühle...“. Lachemann also is the soloist for three of his piano works. These studio recordings followed an intensive four-concert tour of this programme. Lachenmann taught each musician of Ensemble Signal individually on his language of techniques for this project. Liner notes by Paul Griffiths. First in a series of Lachenmann on Mode Records.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

In addition to being a renowned new music pianist, Margaret Leng Tan is a specialist at the toy piano. Her performances are dramatically captured here by Spanish director Anton Cabaleiro. Ms. Tan performs Cage's classic"Suite for Toy Piano," her arrangement.

THIS IS A STANDARD DVD WITH AUDIO ONLY (NO VISUALS). IT IS NOT A DVD-AUDIO AND WILL PLAY ON ALL DVD PLAYERS.

String Quartet No. 2 (1983)
FLUX Quartet
Tom Chiu, violin
Cornelius Duffalo, violin
Kenji Bunch, viola
Darrett Adkins, cello

Feldman's monumental String Quartet No.2 is in one unbroken movement. The FLUX Quartet performance is complete, lasting a total of 6 hours 7 minutes and 7 seconds. Available in 2 Editions: a 5-CD set OR complete and uninterrupted on 1-DVD!

In the 1970s Feldman took up the study and collecting of antique Turkish rugs, a highly evolved and exquisite folk art. The rugs are intricately patterned, symmetrical in basic design but with constant variation and displacement in the detailed execution of that design; strikingly and subtly colored, including fine variegations of principal colors resulting from the dyeing process. Analogies are clear to Feldman's music as it takes up large-scale patterning, partly working with his familiar subtle gradations of rhythm and instrumental color and ostinati, loops or extended repetitions of a sounds, partly - and especially in this second string quartet - continually finding new and surprising qualities of color. There are a number of sounds in this piece unlike anything one has heard from a string quartet.

Lasting more than six continuous hours, it is "a disorienting, transfixing experience that repeatedly approached and touched the sublime." - Alex Ross, in his review of the FLUX Quartet's New York City performance in The New Yorker.

String Quartet 2's score is 124 pages, at one tempo marking of 63-66 beats per minute - as such, a slow tempo. Feldman idiosyncratically sets the bars, so one page may last as little as about half a minute or as much as nearly seven minutes.

"A very exciting quartet composed of four young men...who have lots of ideas and clearly enjoy making music together," - Anthony Tommasini, NY Times, the FLUX Quartet has performed to rave reviews at many music centers around the world. FLUX have performed Quartet 2 in concert numerous times and know the score intimately. The FLUX Quartet's repertoire consists of notable pioneers as well as visionaries of tomorrow - from "classics" by Nancarrow, Ligeti, and Cage, to works by John Zorn, Ornette Coleman, Oliver Lake, and tenor balloonist Judy Dunaway.

This deluxe set features liner notes by Feldman's colleague Christian Wolff, mixing personal experiences and recollections with analysis; and by FLUX founder Tom Chiu who writes of the "experience" of performing such a large-scale work.

One can experience the work uninterrupted - complete, with no need to change discs - on the DVD Edition; along with the thrilling realism of uncompressed 24-bit PCM sound. This audio-only DVD can be played on any DVD player (note: there are no visuals).

For ease of navigation, both the DVD and CD versions have many track points (approximately every 5-6 pages of the score) which allow you to navigate through the disc(s) and the piece. The tracks are identical for both the DVD and CD.

Classical Music

For Bunita Marcus opens with a clear call to our attention. With these first six notes, we step over the threshold and into the journey of the piece. We know that we are in this for the long haul: Morton Feldman’s late works are notorious for being marathons. He composed For Bunita Marcus in 1985, immediately after his four-hour For Philip Guston, and two years after his six-hour String Quartet (II). These earlier works make an hour-long solo piano piece seem short. Still, it is a long time to sustain a single movement, a single journey, and we inevitably have this in mind as we take the first step: so this is how it starts.

This 2-DVD collection features five films by Gerad Patris and Luc Ferrari. Produced by Service de La RecherchT under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer for ORTF. In French only. The films are "Olivier Messiaen : Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum" (1965), "Karlheinz Stockhausen : Momente" (1965), "Hommage a Edgar Varese" (1965, "Herman Scherchen : Quand un homme consacre sa vie a la musique" (1967)and "Cecil Taylor a Paris" (1966).

Classical Music

A major discovery and first recording of an important Cage piece from 1944. In 1944, John Cage was invited to participate in "The Imagery of Chess" exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The artists included Calder, Noguchi, Motherwell, Breton, Duchamp, Ernst, Man Ray, Tanning and other leading surrealists. Cage contributed a painting entitled "Chess Pieces". It was purchased at the show and went into a private collection. For decades it was deemed lost and was (almost) forgotten by Cage afficionados and scholars.

Re-assembling the original artworks for "The Imagery of Chess Revisited" show (2005-06) at the Isamu Noguchi Museum in New York led to the tracking down of the Cage painting. Cage expert Margaret Leng Tan set about transcribing the music in the painting into a playable score which receives its premiere recording here.

Chess Pieces is from 1944, an emotional and creative year for Cage; besides echoes of Satie, Chess Pieces contains prophetic touches of minimalism and has features in common with his monumental piano piece, Four Walls, from the same year.

A renowned Cage interpreter, Ms. Tan worked closely with the composer from 1981 to 1992. Cage was particularly appreciative of her performances of his works for the prepared piano. This is Ms. Tan's long-awaited recording of Cage's prepared piano masterpiece, the Sonatas and Interludes of 1946-48.

Also included is the first recording of the only other musical score from "The Imagery of Chess" show, neo-classical composer Vittorio Rieti's Chess Serenade.

Also available as a surround sound DVD (MOD-DV158) with full performance videos of Chess Pieces and Chess Serenade, plus 2 documentaries: Mr. Cage's Prepared Piano (Ms. Tan takes an in-depth look at the prepared piano), and CAGE: Music/Art/Chess (a closeup look at Cage's and Rieti's pieces in the Noguchi Museum's "The Imagery of Chess Revisited" show).

ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTARY VIDEOS:
* Mr. Cage's Prepared Piano: an insightful look at the history of the prepared piano narrated and performed by Ms. Tan, who also demonstrates how to (and not to) prepare a piano, and describes the preparations in detail both visually and sonically. She prepares and performs excerpts from Bacchanale, Cage's first prepared piano work, and Sonatas & Interludes.
* Cage and the Art of Chess: a visit to "The Imagery of Chess Revisited" exhibit at the Isamu Noguchi Museum with curator Larry List and Ms. Tan. Together they describe Cage's relationship to the show and examine the "Chess Pieces" painting in detail - they also discuss Rieti and his Chess Serenade. Mr. List explores a separate feature on Cage's wife, Xenia Cage, and her Chess Table (Xenia was an artist and also had a piece in the show) and sheds additional background on her life and work.

24-bit surround sound DTS and Dolby Digital surround.
Dedicated 24-bit stereo mix.
English, French, German and Spanish subtitles.

NOTE: Sonatas & Interludes is not accompanied by video.

R E V I E W S

"The seventh volume of John Cage's piano works -- or Volume 34 of the Complete John Cage Edition, if you prefer -- features a transcendent performance of the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1948) meticulously rendered by avant-garde keyboardist extraordinaire, Margaret Leng Tan. Yet Volume 2 in this series features a 1994 recording of the same work, played by Philipp Vandre. For those aiming to collect the full series, this may be an annoyance, but others catching these CDs as they are released will surely appreciate having Tan's superb interpretation of the Sonatas and Interludes, with premiere recordings of Cage's long-lost Chess Pieces for piano (1944) and Vittorio Rieti's Chess Serenade (1944) as bonuses, rather than search for the older disc of the single work. But despite seeming redundant, this CD is clearly one to get: Tan is simply remarkable in the Sonatas and Interludes, giving a realization that is scrupulous in execution, deep in sonic dimensions, and luminous in color; and she offers what is actually a 'period performance,' since she plays a piano identical in its specifications to the small Steinway Cage originally prepared in the process of composition. The differences in sonorities between this album and others are immediately noticeable, especially in this recording's superior resonance and crystalline details; anyone who already knows this work will recognize that Tan's interpretation is truly Cagean in its poetic nuances and hypnotic power. So without disparaging other recordings for being less authoritative -- certainly, Tan holds a considerable advantage for having worked closely with Cage in his final years -- it is safe to say that fans of his most popular piano work will give this album full marks. Mode's sound quality is ideal, too, so this CD receives the highest recommendation. --- Blair Sanderson, allmusic.com, March 2006

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Originally released in 1995. Directed by Frank Scheffer, Andrew Culver. Starring John Cage.