The five musicians Markus Stockhausen, Tara Bouman, Stefano Scodanibbio, Fabrizio Ottaviucci and Mark Nauseef had known each other since the 1980s. A sense of friendship on both personal and artistic levels grew among these musicians, as did the wish to make a recording of their 'Intuitive Music': a music that is fleeting – since it is only intended for the moment – but nevertheless deserves documentation. This is what motivated the present recordings. In February 2008, the five musicians met at Elmau Castle in the Bavarian Alps. For four days, they played together intuitively, without music or prior discussion. Walter Quintus recorded all these encounters and mixed them very skillfully. Stefano Scodanibbio died on 8 January 2012, much too young, after a long illness. This music is dedicated to him.

Tracklist:
1. Ungone
2. Of Silver Tongue
3. The Fluid Thread
4. Right Bright Night
5. She Cleared the Air
6. Invisible Again

Between 1980 and 1997, artists presented a panoply of exhibitions, installations, performances, and concerts, and engaged in lively debate on art theory, at Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Under the direction of founders Paul and Hélène Panhuysen, the building became an important center for an avant-garde that bridged the visual arts and music. Since 2009, the archives of Het Apollohuis have been located at ZKM in Karlsruhe, where scholars are examining, documenting, and preserving this valuable store of sound, text, and pictorial materials. This edition presents excerpts from previously unpublished concert and performance recordings of important artists who appeared during the lifespan of Het Apollohuis. The first CD contains recordings of body related works including self built and invented instruments; the second CD is dedicated to - in the broadest sense of the word - sampling techniques being developed in the 1980s and 1990s.

CD 1: Body Extensions

Max Eastley: Performance
Judy Dunaway: Balloon March
Z’EV: Sound Performance
Akio Suzuki with Junko Wada: Ougi
Jackson MacLow with Anne Tardos: The Black Tarantula
Hugh Davies: Concert
Shelley Hirsch: Zang
Alvin Lucier: Music for Solo Performer
Mark Trayle: Basic Harmony Pt.
Jim Pomeroy: Celestial Mechanix
Paul DeMarinis with Laetitia Sonami: From Olmstead: A Journey Through Texas
Chris Mann: Tout après maintenant

CD 2: Sampling Techniques

Paul Panhuysen: Kanary Grand Band
Jaap Blonk: Obbele Boep ’m Pam
Bob Ostertag: Burns Like Fire
Thomas Köner: Swimming in a Pool of Sounds
Petr Kotik: Cheap Imitation (John Cage, 1982)
David Moss with Axel Otto and Frank Schulte: The Day We Forgot
Ron Kuivila: Loose Canon
Phill Niblock with James Fulkerson: Concert
Arnold Dreyblatt and his European Orchestra of the Excited Strings: Propellers in Love
David Dramm with Ann LaBerge: Bolero
The Michael Gordon Philharmonic: Erlkönig (Franz Schubert, 1815)
Rolf Julius: Bericht aus Berlin

Calm and freedom are the greatest goods. The famous jazz musician Manfred Schoof (trumpet and flugelhorn) and Rainer Bruninghaus (piano, keyboards) like to interact with Beethoven. The music on this CD could be described as pastel drawings with bizarre, dissonant polytonal lines, whose gently calmly pulsating sound current seems to reflect the quiet beauty of untouched landscapes at dusk.

Political music is often music of grief, commemoration, or warning. It recalls the numberless victims of wars, massacres, genocides. It stands athwart the sufferings inflicted on man by man. It struggles with artistic means against suppression and injustice. Works of this sort stand as musical monuments against forgetting. Odeh-Tamimi's music frequently deals with the problems, conflicts, and circum-stances of the Middle East. The titles and texts of his works point in that direction. But it is not the political will alone that causes him to write the music he writes: 'Being political is actually a concept that I came to know in Germany [...]. I'm a Palestinian who was born and grew up in Israel [...].Even though I live in Germany, it doesn't give me any peace. I think of it all the time, of the events, no matter what happens there. Obviously it has left a mark on my music. But a work also gives rise to a work of art. Of course I respond to the tragic songs of the exterminated Jewish people. But still I try to put the message I want to convey into actual music. I have the urge to create truly high art.' (Samir Odeh-Tamimi)

Pianist Grete Sultan (1906-2005) is one of the most extraordinary artists of the 20th century. Raised in a Jewish upper-class household in Berlin, she managed to escape Germany in 1941 after being banned from the concert stage. In New York, she met John Cage with whom she maintained an artistic collaboration for her whole life. Wergo's set Piano Seasons contains her recordings, some of them being released for the first time, of piano works from widely different epochs. Baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary music meet here, finding common ground in the interpretation of this exceptional artist.

SATIE (arr. Svoboda) Sports et divertissements: La chasse. Ludions. Avant-dernières pensées. 3 poèmes d’amour. Gnossienne No. 1. SVOBODA 20 French Songs. Study No. 1, “ Speed.” 5 Canon Studies • Anne-May Krüger (voc, barrel org, toy pn, melodica); Stefan Hussong (acc, toy pn, melodica); Mike Svoboda (tbn, melodica) • WERGO 6806 (72:16)


Composer/trombonist Mike Svoboda was born in 1960 on Guam. Raised in Chicago, his musical path subsequently took him to Germany where, from 1984 to 1995, he worked with Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Martin Smolka, Helmuth Lachenmann, and Wolfgang Rhim, among others. His trombone virtuosity led to numerous engagements with renowned orchestras. He also bestrides the world of jazz, but that influence won’t be found here except on a most metaphorical of levels.


Here he presents Erik Satie as a most kindred spirit to his own. As one can discern from the headnote, all of the Satie on this release has been arranged by Svoboda for a nontraditional group of instruments, from time to time informed and united by the oracular sound of his trombone. The melodica, incidentally, is a quasi-serious contraption invented by the German accordion firm Hohner in either the 1950s or 1960s—a small toy-like wind instrument with a keyboard. Svoboda’s use of the two toy pianos with their not-quite-in-tune tuning conjures up the spirit of John Cage, which hovers benignly over this whole enterprise.


The basic ground plan for most of this offering was to take Satie’s Sports et divertissements , separate each of its melodies in sequence, rescore them from the piano original, and then to intersperse each with one of Svoboda’s 20 French Songs, each of which provides a commentary and an insightful deepening of the Satie jumping-off point.


Satie was an outsider. His contemporaries, Debussy and Ravel, managed to break into the “proper” concert world. When Diaghilev finally presented him with the commissions for Parade and Relâche , which he fulfilled, it was too late. Satie was then an embittered man who shortly died of liver cancer, no doubt aggravated by his alcoholism. Despite Svoboda’s invoking in the liner notes the fact that Satie didn’t think himself a composer but a mere phonométrie , I think that Satie was selling himself short, as was his ironic wont. In fact, his minimalistic piano pieces inspired Les Six , among others, and actually altered the course of French music in the remainder of the 20th century and beyond. In those same liner notes, Svoboda makes his choice of low-tech media clear. In this computer-driven age, a composer has tools that would have boggled the mind of J. S. Bach. I’m sure that Bach would have loved and embraced them, as he had the newest of new-fangled organs. Svoboda claims that his beloved trombone is among the lowest-tech instruments still in use. He has a valid point—the trombone’s basic technology and construction have largely been unchanged since medieval times. Add to this his use of toy and otherwise largely maligned instruments in his sound scheme, and we of the Classical bent are in for something special. So here we have a paradox, a lot of low-tech instruments realizing a lot of music that is potentially high-tech.


German-trained soprano Anna-May Krüger is fully up to the task. She has to steer a course somewhere between a popular chanteuse and a contemporary (Schoenberg-like Sprechstimme artist), and does so with impeccable French diction and affect. Svoboda’s use of slightly out-of-tune toy instruments also bears fruit. In many instances, unisons are not quite intonationally accurate. Rather than being a minus, this proves to be a plus. The beats thus set up become, in and of themselves, musically compelling—yet another case where sheer sonority becomes a vital element of the music.


In the end, I see this release as a manifesto on behalf of all disenfranchised composers of serious music everywhere. Along the way, it provides over 70 minutes of revealing and insightful music-making, captured in state-of-the-art sound.

FANFARE: William Zagorski

Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Michael Gielen: conductor / Westphal Quartett / Percussionensemble Siegfried Fink / Claus Kanngier: cello / Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Peter Ruzicka: conductor.

Solo violin and string orchestra - the pieces on this CD focus on Peteris Vasks' favourite instrumentation. His music - which always has to be viewed against the background of the socially and politically turbulent history of his home country Latvia - leads here through contrasting emotional states: passages of sumptuous beauty are followed by disjointed and dramatic sounds. All three pieces, according to Vasks, represent the polarity between optimistic hope for a better future and an anxious concern for the modern world. About the fantasia "Vox Amoris" Vasks said: "It has to do with the strongest force in the world - love. I hope that this piece touches the listener and makes the world a little more friendly and open for love." With the violin, the "voice of love", the listener experiences different sensations from a gentle blossoming to open passion. 1996/97 saw the composition of the concerto "T?l? gaisma" ("Distant Light"), Vasks' first and so far most extensive work for violin and string orchestra. Its form consists of a sequence of strongly contrasting episodes that are partly influenced by Latvian folk music. Almost ten years later he wrote "Vientu?ais en?elis" ("Lonely Angel"). During its composition, Vasks had a special image in mind: "I saw an angel, flying over the world; the angel looks at the world's condition with grieving eyes, but an almost imperceptible, loving touch of the angel's wings brings comfort and healing. This piece is my music after the pain." The pieces are performed by the exceptional violinist Alina Pogostkina, superbly accompanied by the Sinfonietta R?ga under the direction of Juha Kangas. "You really have to rhapsodize about Alina Pogostkina: so young, so brilliant, so musical, perfect and at the same time natural." (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

The first complete performance of Vasks’ cycle Gadalaiki in superb readings and recording.

Vasks has repeatedly commented on the importance of Nature for him as a person but also as a composer. Indeed Nature often informs his music in one way or another, sometimes almost literally as in the use of stylised birdsong. Rural landscapes from Latvia also imbue some of his music. It is thus not surprising that the cycle of the seasons has inspired him as it has many other composers. His own Seasons, however, were not written as a complete cycle from the start. The idea of a complete cycle came to him when he heard Vestard Shimkus play Pasavara muzika (“Spring Music”) in 2004. The earlier pieces of the cycle - Balta ainava (“White Landscape”) and Rudens muzika (“Autumn Music”) - were composed in 1980 and 1981 respectively for Talivaldis Deksnis who is now better known as an organist and who has recently recorded Vasks’ organ works (Wergo WER 6712 2). As with many other similar cycles Vasks’ Gadalaiki (“The Seasons”) are neither programmatic nor descriptive. The music rather suggests impressions and moods.

Balta ainava (“White Landscape”) is a slow, almost minimalist piece evoking frozen, snow-covered landscapes with the simplest, though most effective means. In total contrast, Pavasara muzika (“Spring Music”), subtitled Quasi una sonata, is the longest and most developed of the whole cycle. The music begins slowly, almost hesitantly. Later it ebbs and flows alternating highly contrasting material, by turns slow and meditative and rhythmically intense. It steadily builds to its exalted, almost ecstatic close. Zala ainava (“Green Landscape”) represents summer. The music opens with a great burst of energy and unfolds with relentless alacrity. It pauses in a short slow section until it reaches the folk-inflected coda quoting from a Latvian folk song. Rudens muzika (“Autumn Music”) begins calmly, but the October storms soon sweep over the land. The storms subside and slower episodes (“a gentle sadness” according to the composer) settle in, but “after a last great storm, the snow comes again as a symbol of a conclusion and a new beginning” (Peteris Vasks).

Vasaras vakara muzika (“Music for a Summer Evening”) is not part of the Gadalaiki cycle but was written as an encore of sorts, albeit a fairly substantial one. This is a very fine miniature tone poem unfolding in utter tranquillity except for a somewhat more animated central section.

Although his output includes many chamber works, Peteris Vasks is ultimately better known as an orchestral composer; but these works for piano are really very fine although I suspect that they must be quite taxing and demanding on the player’s part. Vestard Shimkus obviously possesses all the qualities of technique and musicality that these often beautiful works call for.

I also want to single out for praise the quality of the recorded sound. One hardly realises that this programme was recorded live.

No admirer of Vasks’ music will want to be without this very fine release.

-- Hubert Culot, MusicWeb International

B�la Bart�k plays a major role in many works by Peter E�tv�s. The love of Bart�k's music first appears in the piano piece "Kosmos". The title refers to Bart�k's famous piano cycle "Mikrokosmos". However, the work also bears the title "Kosmos" because Yuri Gagarin's famous space flight was about to take place when it was written in March 1961. E�tv�s was then 17 years old, and Gagarin excited the young composer's imagination. On the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Bart�k's birth in 2006, E�tv�s wrote a piano concerto in which he further developed Bart�k's ideas and thought processes. The concerto is entitled "CAP-KO", an acronym for "Concerto for Acoustic Piano, Keyboard, and Orchestra". The piano resources are extended by use of a computer, which adds further sounds to those being played - a revolutionary technology that E�tv�s wants to be understood as a symbol of Bart�k's pioneering spirit. The concerto centres on the famous Bart�k cascades of octaves and sixths. E�tv�s has twice re-arranged "CAP-KO" for other instrumentations, e.g. as "Sonata per sei" for two pianos, three percussionists, and sampler keyboard. Among the musicians E�tv�s has always admired is Frank Zappa. When Zappa died in 1993 at the young age of 42, E�tv�s responded with grief and anger. He said, "In connection with Zappa's premature and meaningless death, one really cannot praise God, but must protest." He composed a piece that gives expression to this protest. Since the 150 psalms in the Bible do not deal with protest, the piece became Psalm 151: "This is the one that is not in the Bible."

Symphony No. 7 for five soloists, speaker, three mixed choirs and orchestra. First recording of the original version. Bozena Harasimowicz-Haas: soprano / Izabella Klosinska: soprano / Jadwiga Rapp�: alto / Wieslaw Ochman: tenor / Romuald Tesarowicz: bass / Boris Carmeli: narrator / National Philharmonic Choir Warsaw / Henryk Wojnarowski: chorus master / National Philharmonic Orchestra Warsaw / Kazimierz Kord: conductor.

The amalgamation of sound layers and unique tonal colors is fundamental to the works of Swiss composer Michael Pelzel. In his work Sempiternal Lock-in, Pelzel deals with the complex interlocking of parts. Inspired by a stay in South Africa and the interlocking technique of Amadinda playing, Pelzel developed his own technique of interlocking parts. Recorded by the Austrian ensemble Klangforum Wien and taken in part from performances at the festival Ultraschall Berlin this program also includes Along 101, Sentiers tortueux and Sculture di suono in memoriam Giacinto Scelsi.

The works of Thierry Pécou have brought something back into contemporary European music that had almost been forgotten: the sound of Latin America. Thierry Pécou is French, and his Latin America is the product of a creative fantasy that grew out of a desire to explore the nearly extinct Pre-Colombian cultures of Central and South America. Any assumption, however, that these are simply the exotic longings of a European culture tourist would be false. Pécou, who grew up in a Paris suburb and graduated from the Paris Conservatory, has Caribbean ancestors, and so his musical search for roots is also a personal journey of discovery. He is at home in two cultures. One is the culture of career and daily life; the other continues to exist only as a projection arising from the depths of the individual personality – a world which, not only for Pécou himself, has become impossibly distant in a cultural and historical sense. Thierry Pécou’s dreamed landscapes of sound can also be seen as an expression of this search for the ruins of a lost culture. With ritualistic repetitive structures, mysterious depths, and strongly physical sounds, his music conjures up an archaic past, but the colors he uses are those of a symphony orchestra, even though these colors are often placed in unusual or exotic constellations. “My position is somewhat ambiguous, because I am a European, even though I have certain roots in these places (Central America). At the same time, I also want to better understand the Mexican people and their history, for example, and hopefully contribute to the search for their own truth and their own roots.” - Thierry Pécou

HINDEMITH Plöner Musiktag • Jobst Liebrecht, cond; Dietrich Henschel (bar); David Reibel (speaker); RSO Berlin; Marzahn-Hellersdorf Youth SO; Ens of the Hans Werner Henze Music School; Berlin R Children’s Ch and other children’s and youth ch • WERGO WER 6728 2 (71:36 Text and Translation)


Morgenmusik. Tafelmusik. Kantate . Abendkonzert.


On June 20, 1932, Hindemith spent the day at a school in Plön, a small town between Hamburg and Kiel. The school specialized in music, and he had written a series of pieces for the students to learn and play. Thus: A Day of Music at Plön . The day opened with Morning Music , a complex set for brass instruments. Much of the day was spent rehearsing individuals and ensembles. For a boy who could play only the xylophone, Hindemith wrote a part, on the spot; for three boys who couldn’t play any instrument, he wrote recorder trios and had them trained to play the instrument. During breaks between courses of midday dinner, the orchestral Table Music was played. In the afternoon, a cantata (“Admonition to Youth to Apply Themselves to Music”) for two soloists, three choruses, and orchestra which urges children to learn music was sung, spoken (a melodrama), and played. Hindemith was renowned for his sense of humor; the cantata is supposedly mostly tongue in cheek, but any wit therein doesn’t translate—the texts seem deadly serious, almost boarding-school punitive in attitude. The Evening Concert , a 35-minute series of orchestral, ensemble, and instrumental works, closed the day.


The point of it all was performing, not creating music for the ages to be heard by the general public or even the Serious Record Collector. So there seems little point in evaluating the music (by what standards?) or the performances (measured against whom?). While parts of Table Music have a light touch, most of the Plön music is in Hindemith’s heavy, neobaroque style of the early 1930s. Morgenmusik and sections of Abendkonzert have been recorded before, but I have not previously encountered the cantata. This seems to be the first recording of the complete Plöner Musiktag.


A similar day took place at Montepulciano, Italy, in August of 1980, with local school children premiering Hans Werner Henze’s opera Pollicino. Jobst Liebrecht led another performance and a recording in December 1980, sung and played by Berlin school children ( Fanfare 28:1). Liebrecht founded the Marzahn-Hellersdorf Youth Symphony Orchestra in 2005 and performed Plöner Musiktag in 2008, at which time the music school was named after Henze. The booklet lists every performer—258 of them, by my count—but does not tell us who (or which ensemble) performs what. One must assume that all mix into most of the works; for example, there are not enough brass players in any one of the ensembles to fill out Morning Music . This studio recording documents that day in 1932 and a slice of Hindemith’s oeuvre, which Wergo is slowly producing in toto —at least the majority of it that is owned by Schott Music & Media, the label’s parent company.


FANFARE: James H. North

"Piercing, song-like, aggressive, dance-like – this is how her music sounds. Graciela Paraskevaídis was someone who did not bow down. Companions from all over Latin America call her a great beacon, especially during the years of Uruguay's dictatorship." (Yvonne Petitpierre) For many years, the Argentine-Uruguayan composer maintained close ties of artistic friendship with the Ensemble Aventure which presents seven of her works, including four first recordings, on this release. Graciela Paraskevaídis, an exceptional composer from Latin America, is a real discovery. She developed her own musical language which she taught in Europe and combined with traditional idioms of her home country to respond to concrete, current social issues. The sounds which she has worked with are concentrated to the essential and surrounded by silence, rough, yet cheerful in their own way. Hers is a music full of insight, expression and commitment.