Nyabole - Singing on the Way to the Dancing Ground "Look here, the customs of our fathers keep us warm." The men of the Hamar, a south Ethiopian people, still tell of the great deeds of their ancestors, from whom they have inherited their heroic will and strong personality. The music of the Hamar is varied: the word painting of the mouth bow, the sound of the flute, the interplay of voice and lyre stand alongside running songs, leaping dances, and war songs. The recordings were made between 1970 and 1976 by the field researcher and ethnologist Ivo Strecker and - after having been published on LP in 1977 - were awarded the annual German Record Critics' Award, in 1981. This edition not only presents a general introduction to the music of the Hamar, but it also provides us with the social, psychological and historical contexts of the music in the sense of an ethnography of communication and performance. Events that take place at the periphery of a musical performance may be important to help one understand it. This is why an edition of the present kind is only possible with the help of experiences such as those which Ivo Strecker was able to accumulate during his long periods of intensive field research as a participant and observer among the Hamar. This CD set includes a very extensive and richly illustrated booklet.

Four Concerti Grossi - the embodiment of joyous music making. Four journeys into the past to link a modern musical language with characteristic aspects of Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and – fancifully abstruse – the historical figure of Dracula. Everything is tongue-incheek, but artfully assembled and full of sly double meanings. The Concerto Bach-Metamorphosen not only plays with the famous four notes B-A-C-H, but also shares the radicalism and noncompromising nature of Bach’s aesthetic principles. Omaggio a Vivaldi was commissioned by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra for the recorder soloist Stefan Temmingh, who performed the premiere in Potam with the Brandenburg Symphony in 2011. This Homage was written not only to honor the famous Baroque compositional genius from Venice, who was known throughout Europe and significantly influenced Bach, it is also a celebration of craziness and a manic work ethic! Vivaldissimo is performed quite often and has established itself in the trumpet repertoire. The work combines the thrill of virtuoso motoric movement with a post-modern mixture of contrasting styles. “Draculissimo. Concerto grosso” deals with the historical figure of Dracula, the brutal Count Vlad III (Draculea) of Wallachia.

All life originated out of primeval mud. And all life dissolves back into it again at the end. This release in the Edition Musikfabrik series leans its ear towards sewage sludge as well as “the ocean of yes and no.” It cringes at the end of the world before the sublimity of nature, seeking to surpass her with composed conglomerates, it allows itself to be buried alive, only to eat itself free from the earth three times. Four fascinating attempts to understand nature and to explore humanity’s position within it. For the composer Brian Ferneyhough, Cornwalls inhospitable landscape of moraine became the starting point of a composition for six voices and an 18 member ensemble. Klaus Langs „The ocean of yes and no“ is a story with no beginning or end, no climax and no apotheosis. While Carola Bauckholt has often used the “fauna philharmonic” in her recent compositions, she works with a whole bestiary in "Schlammflocke". In Jorge E. Lopez’s „Gonzales the Earth Eater“ the composer quotes William S. Burroughs’s psychedelic sceneries with creatures such as „Gonzales“, who defies his own funeral. This recording contains four fascinating attempts to understand Nature and to explore man’s place (in Nature). The demanding artwork of the series is created with pictures by the painter Gerhard Richter, commenting on the thematic concentration of the programs in an artistic manner. Richter, one of the most important living German artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.

Whether produced by nature or by human beings, whether logs or metal containers, Staub turned these objects into his "acoustical material" in the original sense of the word. He was, in a manner of speaking, constantly en route on a voyage of discovery of sounds. At first, he built his own instruments. The result is marked by a close proximity to arte provera, a rejection of overblown techniques, and an almost ecological renunciation of compositional devices. The second stage is the compositional process per se, e.g. the gradual incorporation of traditional instruments in his wholly original "sound concretizations". Volker Staub's composition is formed of 23 (partially interpenetrating) pieces which form new entities at a higher level of organization.

The "vina" is one of the most important musical instruments used in Carnatic music, which today is still a living musical art and an essential cultural aspect of South India. Rajeswari Padmanabhan and Karaikudi Sambasivayer Subramanian are playing the "vina" in the 9th generation and the remarkable percussionist Tanjore Upendran accompanies them on the "mridangam". The recordings for "Sambho Mahadeva" (Great god Sambhu) were made in June 1975 in the studios of Sender Freies Berlin and the Ethnological Museum in Berlin and include 7 first recordings of a total of 17 pieces. The extensive booklet contains - besides descriptions of the compositions and their respective musical styles - numerous examples of notations and many photographs.

What gives Johannes Kalitzke's music both it's general and specific qualities is a controlled variety, a multiformity which is focused inward on a single point and yet radiates outward from that same point. Words like diversity and diversity always occur there in the game where the wealth of the question. Wealth is a general feature for Kalitzke handwriting, but one must not confuse wealth with opulence. It is this composer no means primarily to do outer effort, though he does not necessarily shy away from the mobilization of sound resources. But rich - namely from the inside - his music is also where it is limited to a few instruments. In John Kalitzke is a manifold not the effort, but the complexity, the individual parameters are in incessant interaction with each other, are mutually dependent, complement, to grow together in association, union, summation to integration.

This recording presents four important compositions by Arnold Sch�nberg, recorded by the Sinfonieorchester des S�dwestfunks conducted by Michael Gielen. The Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, were epoch-making not only within Sch�nberg's oeuvre but in music history generally: they are among the first instrumental compositions to dispense with tonality as an artistic means. The CD also includes Sch�nberg's Cello Concerto with Heinrich Schiff as soloist.

for the first time, an album of the ZKM electronic series is to be released that uses state-of-the-art technical procedures for sound production as an integral part of the musical staging of an opera. ''The Wigns of Daedalus'' similarly uses technology to build the sound substance. Here, not only methods of sound production or editing, but also movements of sound in space are used as a means of dramaturgical articulation. The artful integration of the voice into the quasi-orchestral/concrete musical development is striking. From a mixture of noise and pitched sounds Maurizio Squillante developed a sound libretto which functions as an inner narrator and captures the audience from the very beginning until the final notes fade away.

Since more than two thousand years, temple festivals and processions in South India start with the deafening signals of the oboe-like Nadhaswaram and heavy strokes on the Thavil drum. By now, this pair of musical herolds has been raised to the status of classical instruments. Sheik Chinna Moulana, undisputedly the most important player of the Nadhaswaram, who opened the Festival of India in Germany in 1991, presents a lyrical version of the Carnatic music of South India.

Within James Wood’s oeuvre the work Stoicheia is a precis and pinnacle of more than ten years of systematically pursued exploration of the means of expression most inherent to percussion. The result is a grand panorama of rhythm and sound: an invitation to all those who participate in the magic and rituals of the high art of percussion.

“Shadows in the Dark” is the fifth of ten albums in WERGO’s continuing “Edition Enjott Schneider”. This time, Enjott Schneider presents two solo concertos and a double concerto, inviting the listener on an emotional journey into the darkness of mythology, the psyche, and the past. Schneider’s “Phoenix” refers to the legendary bird known as a symbol of immortality, resurrection, and life after death. The phoenix incinerates itself so that it can rise again in constantly repeating cycles. The concerto of the same name, which initially was conceived to symbolize the eternal rebirth of “beauty” from chaos, ruins, and ashes, took on an oppressive reality dominated by suffering, leavetaking, and grief. “Neidhart’s Nightmare”, a minnelied for piano and orchestra, alludes to the darkness of the Middle Ages and the coarse poetry of Neidhart von Reuental, the most popular minnesinger of his age. In an aggressive dance, Enjott Schneider illustrates the poet’s fear of stifling dance halls and aggressive, loutish peasants – images that haunted Neidhart like a nightmare. “Dunkelreise” (Dark Journey) is a psychological study of a figure from the period of high Romanticism. This oboe concerto is based on fragments of music by Hans Rott, a brilliant composer and Bruckner pupil who died at the age of 26 in an insane asylum and from whom only a few complete works survive. From selected pieces by Rott, Enjott Schneider developed an imaginary narrative that alternates between madness and reality. Consolation and hopeless maniacal searching are combined to lead the listener on a harrowing journey into the dark night of a fading psyche.

Steve Gorn impressively demonstrates that it is also possible for musicians born in the West to devote themselves to the full profundity of another musical tradition and to achieve a musical maturity that is recognized as authentic by both cultures. In the early 1970s Steve Gorn studied the bamboo flute called the bansuri under Sri Gour Goswami in Calcutta. The CD is a reminder of the man who died in 1975, whose performance stirred memories of old India, in which time and space were transcended, and every raga evoked it's own landscape.

Performances of the topeng masquerade are given for many different occasions in West Java, to honor of ancestors or to celebrate harvests or births. The composition Tatalu is generally heard as an instrumental opening of topeng performances and serves to call the audience, so the real performance can begin. The dance topeng rahwana takes as it's theme power, courage, and bravery but also desire and lack of restraint. Finally, tarawangsa is a genuine popular art is performed on the tarawangsa (a violin with an end pin) and the jentreng (a kind of seven-stringed zither). It's ceremonial significance is associated with a ritual of thanksgiving associated with the rice harvest. Tarawangsa can also be played for healings or even purely for entertainment.

The music of Leopold Hurt is characterized by findings of a both musical and non-musical nature: In two of the four pieces on the present portrait CD, the composer deals with a music tradition that has been mostly neglected in contemporary compositions up to now - the traditional music of the Alpine area. The findings sometimes shine through in the original, e.g. in "Erratischer Block" as historic shellac recordings of Alpine music, or sometimes serve, inaudibly, as background, like the L�ndler melodies in the orchestral work "Seuring Schalter". By using the zither, Hurt also sets an unmistakable accent which points far beyond regional references, while being heard as a zither player himself. The non-musical findings, coming from filmic and technical realms, reflect Hurt's enthusiasm for conceptual design. The discovered supply of forms and material dictates rules and structures which, however, are broken up again and again by the composer who, thus, surprises the listener with unexpected turns. The present titles with their varying instrumentations - from string trio (Mondrian Ensemble Basel) via ensemble pieces (ensemble mosaik, Ensemble Resonanz) to orchestral work (Philharmoniker Hamburg) - provide an insight into the various facets of Hurt's oeuvre.

The opera Bluthochzeit (Bloodwedding) by Wolfgang Fortner is based upon the lyric tragedy of the same name by Federico Garcia Lorca. The premonition of a crime yet to be committed pervades the story from the very beginning. Premiered in Cologne in 1957, Bluthochzeit first became one of the most successful operas in the post-war era. However, today the opera is seldom performed. This DVD features an acclaimed new production staged by Christian von Gotz for the Wuppertal Theater in January 2013.