Milica Djordjevic, #44 - Mali Svitac; Quicksilver; Cvor; Mit
BR Klassik
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Jul 19, 2024
The music of composer Milica Djordjevic, born in Belgrade in 1984, is based on an exuberant and imaginative use of sound. She has full command of the entire arsenal of contemporary sound and performance techniques, which never cease to surprise. She began her composition studies in her native city of Belgrade, where she was already working with electronic music, then went on to Strasbourg and IRCAM in Paris before completing her studies from 2011-2013 in Berlin with Hanspeter Kyburz at the Hochschule fur Musik Hanns Eisler. Her already extensive oeuvre, which is performed by leading international soloists and ensembles, includes pieces for solo instruments, chamber music works in a wide variety of formations, vocal works, and large-scale orchestral compositions. The diversity of her work highlights her versatility and technical virtuosity. Djordjevic has received numerous prestigious prizes and awards for her compositions, including the Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music (2015), the Composition Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation (2016) and the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize of the Berlin Philharmonic (2020). In Milica Djordjevic's short orchestral work Mali svitac, žestoko ozaren i prestravljen nesnosljivom lepotom (Little firefly, brightly lit and shocked by unbearable beauty), commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2023, the composer is concerned with "the immense energy it takes to make things glow". Her extended orchestral work Quicksilver was commissioned by musica viva of Bayerischer Rundfunk and premiered on December 16, 2016 by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Rundel in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. It is precisely the strict limitation of the melodic movement to very few, narrow interval steps that makes it "all the richer and more colourful on the inside". Cvor (Knot) for winds, piano and percussion, a work commissioned for the Donaueschingen Music Festival, briefly but very intensively describes a knot that squeezes and twists and finally bursts. The fourth work on this BR-KLASSIK CD - Mit o ptici (Myth of the Bird) for choir and orchestra - was commissioned by musica viva in 2020 and premiered on October 28, 2022 with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under the direction
Music has the ability to illuminate aspects of the human condition in ways that only sound married to texts can achieve. One of the greatest preachers of the twentieth century, William Sloan Coffin, often remarked that music in most cases was more powerful than the spoken word. This recording represents just that. All the music on this recording reflects, in sound, that serenity (and, yes, beauty) is within all of us if we choose to go there. This recording celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Westminster Choir in 1920 by John Finley Williamson, albeit a bit later.
Composer Matt McBane and the renowned Sandbox Percussion ensemble team up on Bathymetry — a 40-minute piece in eight movements scored for monophonic Moog analog synthesizer and percussion. Drawing on classical minimalism, electronic production, ASMR Youtube aesthetics and the diverse palette of ambient modular synth music, Bathymetry features McBane’s Moog synth with Sandbox Percussion performing on a veritable playground of found instruments (mixing bowls, ping pong balls, glass bottles, etc.), orchestral percussion (vibraphone, tam tam, etc.), and drum sets.
Sprengers: Meditations for String Quartet / Ma'at Ensemble
Yarlung Records
CD
$23.99Oct 21, 2022
“Marcus Aurelius, warrior emperor, philosopher and poet during the Second Century AD, reminds us that people with enormous power do not always fall victim to their own vanity. Total power may usually corrupt totally, but not always. I find this heartening, especially in 2022 during another time of war, where titanic egos guiding powerful militaries battle each other with real life consequences for ordinary people and elites alike. Aurelius was indeed a bloodily victorious commander of Roman legions, defeating numerous enemies on the battle field during his reign. But the emperor continued his introspective journey throughout most of his life, honing his “inner world,” to use a modern phrase, as he tried to maintain a balance between being the most powerful person on the planet and a man answerable to his own conscience and higher philosophy.
"Brussels-based classical, jazz, funk and new-age composer Koben Sprengers notes that Aurelius’ “Meditations,” as they are popularly known, were written not for publication but “for himself, as a sort of diary or personal notebook; to frequently remind himself of the important lessons and wisdom he had learned from the ancient philosophers. Since his writings were aimed at himself, I found that these paragraphs had a very intimate, familiar voice to them. Like a grandfather patiently explaining something to his overly curious grandchild, almost soothing….” I hope Marcus Aurelius’ stable intelligent voice and vision, as portrayed in his own words and through music composed by the young firebrand Koben Sprengers, gives you solace and inspiration during this remarkable and troubling period of history.” (Bob Attiyeh, producer)
Few performers are more familiar with the musical language of the French composer Olivier Messiaen than the American conductor Kent Nagano. Nagano has had Messiaen's orchestral works and oratorios in his program for several decades now, and he also participated in the world premiere of “Saint François d'Assise”, Messiaen's only opera. During the year 1982 Nagano spent his time with Messiaen in Paris, where not only an artistic relationship but also a close personal one developed between the two musicians.
BR-KLASSIK has now released three masterpieces by the French composer with the magical sound, presented by Kent Nagano to the Munich concert audience in recent years as conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks: the oratorio “La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ" (The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ) for chorus, seven solo instruments and orchestra, the song cycle "Poèmes pour Mi" for soprano and orchestra, as well as "Chronochromie" for large orchestra. These three live recordings document outstanding artistic events from the Munich concert program of June 2017, July 2018 and February 2019.
This album is devoted to the sounds of southern India, and more precisely those of the Auroville forest near Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu. This field recording was made by audio naturalist Bernard Fort and documents the natural soundscapes in both day and night, respecting the chronology of the birdsongs and their length, together with the silences and contrasting dynamics. These soundscapes also feature the wind, the distant ocean and the sounds of the forest itself, often caused by the presence of little mammals both in tree branches and on the ground.
This album, composed by Majid Derakhshani and sung by Zohreh Jooya, is based on poems of the Persian mystics Mowlana Rumi, Hafiz and Saadi. It is a blend of classical Persian music with the colors and sounds of today; an unconventional combination of Oriental and European instruments. It represents a new musical direction: evocative and contemplative melodies, a fusion of oriental and occidental rhythms and sounds which envelop the soul with a gentle, velvety caress. Traditional rhythms and sounds with contemporary aesthetics. It is the belief and the truth in these poems which connects the soul with God. The realization of a new world evolves from the reading of these verses. Realism and mysticism are part of a whole, in which the profane and the holy, human and Divine love, senses and spirit become one. Majid Derakhshani was born in Iran into an artistic family. He studied string instruments and composition at the University of Teheran. After moving to Germany he founded the Nova music school in Cologne. He has given many highly-respected performances at international festivals and at radio stations all over the world. Today he is considered one of the best tar players in Iran.
Eloïsa Matheu and Francesc Llimona left for East Africa at the end of the dry season, when the Blue Wildbeest begin their migration south. They recorded in the big National Parks: Maasai Mara, Amboseli and Kakuru Lake in Kenya, then Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Manyara in Tanzania. The concerts which are successively recorded, aim at recreating the general atmosphere of these landscapes. Different biotopes fuse into one another. Birds are everywhere and sounds interweave. Patrick FReMEAUX
HOVDA Onyx. Song in High Grasses. Snapdragon. Leaning Into and Away. Ariadne Music. Coastal Traces Tidepools 1. Shenai Sky. Record of an Ocean Cliff. Crossings in a Mountain Dream. Glacier Track. Glosses Glacier. Beginnings. Coastal Traces Tidepools 2. Borealis Music. Boundaries. Cymbalmusic: Centerflow/Trail II. Journey Music. Lemniscates. Regions. Jo Ha Kyu. Ikima. Breathing The Proclamation: excepts. Dancing in Place. Spring Music with Wind. 40 Million Gallons of Music • Prism Players; Libby Van Cleve (ob, English horn, shenai); Jack Vees (el gtr, b gtr); Eleanor Hovda (pn, cymbals, shakuhachi); Relache; Cassatt Qrt; California EAR Unit; Jan Weller, David Gilbert (fl); Elizabeth Panzer (hp); Lee Humphries (pn); et al. • INNOVA 808 (4 CDs: 4:20:03)
I’ve written about Eleanor Hovda (1940–2009) in these pages before; indeed, in the program notes for this release I’m quoted at length. For that I’m honored, because I feel she is a major composer in need of a certain rescue now. She died of cancer far too young; she forsook positions in the Ivy League and New York artistic life for grassroots arts administering in her native and beloved Minnesota; she wrote music that, despite genuine complexity, often looked simple or naïve in score. In short, by life and aesthetic choices she herself made, and by the cards dealt her over which she had no control, she was marginalized in the broader culture of American music. But we still need her.
Parts of this comprehensive collection were originally released by O.O. Discs and I reviewed some of it in Fanfare 22:4; I’d urge interested readers to check this review out in the online archive, as it goes into much more technical detail about the music than I will here. The second disc, Coastal Traces, is more of an extended collective improvisation for dance featuring Libby Van Cleve, double reeds; Jack Vees, guitars; and Hovda on piano interior. But the other three discs consist of more clearly defined pieces, even though they still have the composer’s trademark openness.
I now think of Hovda to some degree as the American Scelsi. By that I mean there’s an emphasis on pure sound as an expressive medium, shaped at the macro and micro level to bring out what Wallace Stevens called “the beauty of inflections.” There’s also a mystical/spiritual bent, but it’s never overbearing. Unlike Scelsi’s, Hovda’s music is often fragile, gentle, and delicate. As a result, when it really rips loose, it carries a shocking impact. I now feel that she’s an example of what I call “sonic charisma,” a capacity to take basic sonic materials that should be simplistic, facile, messy, and then imbue them with such authenticity that you can’t resist them. (Christian Wolff is another such composer in my book.)
The performances are consistently imaginative and committed, and make the case for the music persuasively. Some of the recordings are more “archival” than others, but I’d never for a second preclude their inclusion because of some hiss or ambient noise. The works range from the exceptional oboe work Jo Ha Kyu (thrillingly performed by Libby Van Cleve) to the Cassatt Quartet’s glasslike rendition of Lemniscates to what sounds like a vast Tibetan tantric ritual in 40 Million Gallons of Music (in fact the real story is just as wild, as the piece is a sonic exploration of a giant underground water storage tank in Fayetteville, Arkansas, recorded just after 9/11). Hopefully that gives some idea of the range. As a grand bonus, the scores for works on three of the four discs are viewable on your computer as pdfs (as are extended program notes for the entire set). One senses both how free and how precise the composer was; her craft is evident in these striking scores in her own hand. Though there is one score, Cymbalmusic, whose graphic approach is incredibly beautiful and imaginatively focused, in all the scores one sees a magical touch at work, mixing scribbling doodles with more traditional notation.
A final word of thanks and recognition to Philip Blackburn and the entire Innova organization, as this is yet another of the incredibly important rescue operations they’re performing for composers who might otherwise slip through the cracks (I think of their great Henry Brant series, for example). Every music library in America, for example, should have this collection. Bravo; it gives us all a little faith in lean times. And this is unquestionably on the next Want List.
This CD brings the listener the sounds of bells worn by hears of cows in mountainous districts and goats and sheep from the Mediterranean area. Different recordings follow on from one another to form one “pastoral symphony”, and, thanks to the index, the listener may choose any particular passage. Numerical recordings, these sounds are now disappearing; they form a relaxing metallic music, evoking the harmony that still exists between man and nature in remaining pastoral areas. Patrick Fremeaux
“All the sound landscapes presented here were recorded in the spring in various parts of Sardinia by Bernard Fort. From the coast to mountain tops, passing through the extensive central plains and wetlands, the great variety of landscape can be found in the different soundscapes each one provides. The acoustics particular to each site, perfectly recorded in this CD, reveal Sardinia’s captivating and wild beauty.” Patrick FReMEAUX
“The stars of this CD are the birds. Often discreet, whether migrants or residents, it’s in the spring when looking for a mate and nesting that the different species’ songs are at their height. Each bird then tries to make itself heard above the general chorus in woods, fields and gardens.” Pierre Palengat
“This CD offers the listener a journey along a water course, from a source to the sea. The music of droplets and of rain, streams and water falls, the calmer music of a river, of a lake and the sea. This natural music, surely some of the worlds most ancient, puts the listener in osmosis with the environment using the most musical of the basic elements. The author, Pierre Palengat is a sound recorder, naturalist and musician. His CDs, of great acoustic sensibility, offer the listener a sample of the best of nature’s sounds.” Patrick Fremeaux
Gibbons, Helmeted Hornbills, Cicada, Indian Cuckoos and Asian Fairy Blue Birds recorded by Pierre Huguet in a pirogue slipping trough the heart of the oldest forest in the world (it has existed for 120 thousand years without climatic upheaval). The CD presents also a guide to identify the species that are typical of Malaysia. Replaces PIT11042.
“This CD allows the listener to penetrate the natural atmosphere of hardly reachable landscapes located in six Mountain areas of Asia. Jean C. Roche presents the sensorial approach of a day on Mount Omei, a sacred wooded mountain in Szechwan (China), a morning on the forested banks of Pokhara Lake (Nepal) plus an afternoon in the hill forests above the same lake, a day in Khao Yai National Park (Thailand), and finally a morning and a dusk in Taman Negara National Park (Malaysia).” Patrick Fremeaux
This CD of more than 66 minutes are recordings of the fascinating world of sounds of the Jura forests, realm of the Lynx, which participates in these winter concerts. The listener is taken, during the different seasons, into different places such as: impenetrable or open forests, narrow gorges, and even into a bat filled cave.
(Booklet in English) Monkeys communicate using their most developed senses: mainly sight and hearing, secondarily smell and touch. Visibility is reduced in tropical and equatorial forests where monkeys use sound, the only way of communicating over large distances. The CD includes more than an hour of recordings made while tracking monkeys in the forests of Gabon, Cameroon and Zaire, in difficult conditions, often without the animals awareness of the recorder's presence.
(Booklet in French) the recordings presented on this disc were made in 1995, during a stay organized for Bernard Fort by Montreal University's Faculty of Music. The recordings presented on this record were made during a stay organized for Bernard Fort by Montreal University. This representation of Canadian soundscapes on seven sound tracks allows the listener to discover the pure beauty of these vast territories during spring and summer in a 70 minute long ecological symphony.
“A sound guide to the Frogs and Toads of Western Europe, by Jean C. Roche. The first part of this CD contains recordings of the voices of 35 species of European Frogs and Toads: painted frogs, coloured-bellied toads, midwife toads, spadefeet, parsely frog, toads, “brown” and “green” frogs, bullfrog, tree frogs. The second part contains amphibian concerts recorded in different parts of France and Europe. The listener will discoverstrange sounds as well as some very musical sound atmospheres.” Patrick Fremeaux
“Borneo is the second largest island on earth and the largest of the Indonesian archipelago. It is at a real crossroads with Java, the Malaysian peninsula, the Philippines and the Sulawesi islands. The eight diurnal concerts on this disc were recorded during June, July & August by Remy Bruckert and mixed by Thierry Gaultier. They allow the listener to hear to the outstanding ornithological richness of Borneo: no less than 650 species of birds have been found here, about thirty are endemic.” Patrick Fremeaux & Jean C. Roche
We are all familiar with the skylark, the "lark ascending". But few are aware that it is just one among many species in the lark family. To look at, they are all rather similar: small and clad in a mixture of earthy browns. But when you hear their songs, how completely different they are. On this CD you will hear the songs of the nine European species.
This CD includes eight magnificent concerts recorded in the Niokolo Koba national park in Senegal. It is possible to hear a great variety of birds such as the Black-crowned Tchagra, Falk-tailed Drongo or White-crowned Robin and also green monkeys and baboons, hippopotamuses, lions and hyenas. In short all the strange sounds of the jungle at dawn or dusk, and fascinating nocturnal concerts with owls, nightjars, insects and frogs. (AKA STT 300412)
“A CD allowing the listener to recognise the songs of Europe’s garden birds. A 70 minute sound guide recorded by Jean C. Roche indexed in a 20 page French/English booklet that gives the common and Latin names of the 99 species on this CD.” Patrick Fremeaux
“Over an hour of recordings of particularly remarkable bird song, whose performers merit being called “great masters”: twelve species (six European) at the summit of melody invention. Alone or in duet, their music is presented in a French/English booklet by Jean C. Roche.” Patrick Fremeaux
This CD of a new kind allows the listener to listen to the Voices of the Ocean. Over 58 minutes you will hear the songs and calls, indeed, the language of 5 species of Cetacea. Jean C. Roche realized this recording thanks to the Marine Mammal Fund in San Francisco and it's director, Mr Stan Minasian, who supplied him with rare and beautiful sounds. With the sounds of: Killer Whale, Beluga Whale, Narwhal Whale, Humpback, Bowhead Whale and Bearded Seals.
Costa Rica, a small country in Central America, is a paradise for the naturalist. Its rich mixture of different climates and habitats is marvellously well protected by an extensive network of national parks and reserves. No less than 850 species of birds occur, as well as 210 species of mammals and 350 reptiles and amphibians (nearly ten times as many as in Europe). The material of this CD was recorded during the rainy season by Eloisa Matheu, assisted by Francesc Llimona and local experts. Jean C. Roche has had the task of mixing the recordings, to recreate atmospheres unique to each habitat. Patrick FReMEAUX
Five landscapes, five different biotopes, each one with it's specific species, and also it's own acoustics, over a wide range or narrow, in open space or enclosed. All mainly recorded during May, at dawn, at that special moment of first light, before the sun rises.
"The birds of France are either sedentary or migrant. The climate comprises a variety of soundscapes fashioned with a great diversity of bird songs. This sound guide features recordings compiled by Jean C. Roche and enables the listener to identify the various common species in France. Its 24-page booklet (with both French and English notes) presents all of the 99 species. To fully appreciate nature one must listen to it." Patrick Fremeaux
(2-CD Set) A double CD including the common calls and songs of 79 familiar bird species of towns, villages and the countryside. Classed in four categories, from simple, repeated notes to varied, unpredictable songs; the CDs are a real learning tool. The simpler calls and songs are on CD1; the more complex on CD2. The species name is announced at the start of each track, making for easy use especially for the poorly-sighted.
A master-piece on 10 CD by Jean-Claude Roche, the climax of a unique career in natural sound recording. A sound encyclopaedia of western habitats, the 10 CD set includes the songs and calls of 442 species of European birds with a further 39 from North Africa, whose songs are described and indexed in a 44 page booklet. Patrick FReMEAUX
