More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. Artis Wodehouse: piano / Michael McNabb: soprano saxophone, synthesis, and processing.

Bells, drums, and stones are found among the earliest archeological founds of musical instruments. Since second millennium B.C.E. percussion instruments have been used in China in religious, court, and popular music. Pure percussion music soon followed. The percussion music of Thundering Dragon (with five hundred instruments in all, including bamboo, wood, bronze, iron, and elephant-foot drums, gongs with voices of winds, tigers, and dogs, and bells and rattles), which builds primarily on the traditional popular music of China, combines depiction of nature with humor and virtuosity.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology.

If we accept that contemporary composition is characterized by the striking co-existence of postmodern tendencies and continuing traditions of modernism, then it is legitimate to see in the works of Hans-J�rgen von Bose dating from the 1980s a realization of both tendencies - both in the sequence of pieces and within the works themselves. Without superficially avoiding the tensions and also contradictions inherent in such a combination of elements and issues, von Bose in his works has achieved a position of integration. The three pieces on this CD - each in it's own way - redefine the role of time through the collapse of flowing chronometric elements and aspects of cause and effect - and with the labyrinth as a formal concept.

Already in the Renaissance the toccata (from the Italian toccare - to touch) was understood to be a free-form virtuoso piece for keyboard instruments. Today, as for centuries, the toccata is for keyboard a favourite model for improvisation, and the organ toccatas on this recording radiate the spontaneous sheen of an unacademic musical joy. Rosalinde Haas: organ. This production received the quarterly German Record Critics' Award.

The musicians of the Mallik family have for many generations been masters of the dhrupad style, the oldest form of North Indian art song. In India they are famous for their own rhythmically accentuated singing style and the rich repertoire of compositions, some using ragas that are sung only by their family. Because of the demands that the dhrupad places on the voice, it is usually sung by several singers at once. In India they say that the strength of four elephants is required to develop it fully. Bidur Mallik and his sons, Ramkuma and Premkumar, were fortunate enough for a time to be the ensemble that came closest to this standard.

Harald Weiss, composer, percussionist, and stage director, applies his artistic energies at the dividing line between music and theater. An experienced composer and performer, he smuggles musical material into visual environments and creates figures for the stage that quietly or restlessly occillate between audible and visible worlds. Peter M�ller: piano / Cyklus / Carina Mora: sopran / Mandolinenorchester Bielefeld / Harald Weiss: pecussion, voice.

The "Five Orchestral Pieces" by Joaquin Rodrigo chosen for this recording range from 1924 to 1982, the last year in which Rodrigo wrote compositions for orchestra. "Cinco Piezas Infantiles" was the first of Rodrigo's orchestral scores to make an impact: "Reading the score makes one's hair stand on end!" (E. L. Chavarri) "These five children's pieces are made to please grown-up children who enjoy games of sounds and rhythms." (R. Brussel) "Per la flor del lliri blau" [For the flower of the blue lily] is a symphonic poem, based on a Valencian legend. Though the idiom of the piece is part of the European late-Romantic tradition, the voice is unmistakeably Rodrigo's own and demonstrates how easily Rodrigo integrates popular Spanish styles of music to great effect, as also seen in "Palillos y Panderetas" and "Homenaje a la Tempranica" - a homage to a famous zarzuela, the Spanish form of light operetta. During a visit in Texas, Rodrigo had made the acquaintance of some astronauts and had been allowed to touch some stones from the moon. He was thinking about this event when he wrote "A la búsca del mas alla" [In search of the 'beyond'] some years later. This piece begins and ends somehow lost in space - in the beyond.

Sierra Maestra - named for Cuba's highest mountain - is one of the best-known and no doubt also one of the best Cuban bands, which specializes in "genuine" Cuban music, the son autentico. The particular strength of this group also distinguishes it's personal style: all of the instrumentalists are also outstanding singers; for example, Maceito, also known as Jos� Antonio Rodriquez, the band's lead singer, is one of Cuba's most famous son singers today. Sierra Maestra is among the best son, or salsa, bands in the Spanish Caribbean.

Koechlin's inner preoccupation with the theme of light - the changes between light and dark, sun and moon, day and night, month and season - is revealed in all his creative periods and often makes it's way into the musical interpretation itself as the playing instruction, "lumineux" (luminous); this leads to a special formal synthesis in "Les Heures Persanes". This CD was awarded the "Le Diapason d'Or"- and the "Choc Musique"-Award. Herbert Henck: piano.

The Indian string instrument called the tamboura is known for it's spatial (overtone) sound. It is used in an experimental way, that is, in unusual tunings and with a group of four instruments arranged in a circle. The startling range of sounds produces a state of harmonic floating that is reminiscent of a child in the womb.

When Michael J�llich causes the gong in the Speyer Cathedral, which is almost human-sized, to gradual rise from the silence to a crescendo, it is clear from the beginning what the subtitle, "Dynamic Meditation Music", refers to. The dynamic development of sounds of the various gongs and gongdrums is not meant for dancing but for meditative listening and for inner calm. Several of the gongs are tuned to the five major tones of Chinese music, and they channel the "universal force", or chi, in keeping with cosmology.

Peteris Vasks was born in Aizpute, Latvia, the son of a church minister. He studied the double bass and composition in Riga and Vilnius, among others with Valentius Utkins, and was a member of various symphony and chamber orchestras. He currently is a free-lance composer living in Riga. Among the works of Vasks, his compositions for string orchestra are of particular importance. With the help of several works scored for strings, the CD on hand imparts comprehensive knowledge of the development that Vasks has undergone since the last 70's. Vasks wrote in the introduction to his symphony "Stimmen" [Voices]: "At the end of 1990 I had begun to write the symphony. Then came January 1991. Blood was flowing in the streets of Latvia and Lithuania. Sleepless nights at the barricades. After all that, the new beginning was difficult. The symphony speaks of my essential, most meaningful themes. About life. About eternity. About conscience. I wrote it with love and faith."

It happened very much as it did in the 18th century - which Werner Egk considered a kind of spiritual home - where a composer wrote for an ensemble at hand. It was under such circumstances that Egk composed the "Divertissement" (1973-74) for eleven winds, the version for winds (1980) of the overture to his early opera "Die Zaubergeige" (The Magic Violin), and the arrangement of Mozart's "Sinfonia concertante" in E-flat KV 297b, his last work. The musicians who inspired Egk in these three scores were Klaus Rainer Sch�ll and the Wind Ensemble of Mainz which Sch�ll founded in 1967. It is said that Werner Egk had to be persuaded to write music of an intimate character; in his long list of works chamber music plays the smallest role, being limited to the Piano Sonata of 1947 and two pieces for winds dating from the 1970's. Bl�ser Ensemble Mainz / Klaus Rainer Sch�ll: conductor.

Ligeti's Cello Concert - particularly when combined, as here, with Lontano - offers a wonderful introduction to the maestro's music, and Siegfried Palm, to whom the work is dedicated, is it's ideal interpreter. Siegfried Palm: violoncello / Sinfonie-Orchester des Hessischen Rundfunks, Frankfurt/Main / Michael Gielen: conductor / Sinfonie-Orchester des S�dwestfunks, Baden-Baden / Ernest Bour: conductor / Gunilla von Bahr: flute / Torleif L�nnerholm: oboe / Sinfonie-Orchester des Schwedischen Rundfunks / Elgar Howarth: conductor.

With a score derived from star maps - the "Atlas Australis", a book of maps of stars as they can be seen from Australia - and the "I Ching" (64-choice Old-Chinese chance manual) "Etudes Australes" is a quintessentially Cageian work. Grete Sultan is an active recitalist who has performed music both classic and contemporary around the world. "When I wrote the 'Sonatas and Interludes', it was with Maro Amian in mind", Cage said. "David Tudor was in my mind when I wrote the 'Music of Changes'. Without Grete Sultan in mind, her quiet, indomitable strength, her devotion to the piano (which I also love), her discipline, her determination to transform music from the paper into life, I would not have embarked on this project. Now of course I am delighted that I did." Grete Sultan: piano.

The Bluethroat is a delightful bird which quickly endears itself to anyone fortunate enough to observe it. Although the playing time of a CD is not enough to demonstrate the full repertoire of a singing Bluethroat, the listener should gain a clear impression of this virtuoso's song from the recordings presented here: The longer you listen, the more you become aware of the seemingly endless variety of the song with it's numerous and deceptively accurate imitations of other birds' voices and even mimicry of frogs, crickets, peals of bells, and other sounds from the breeding grounds and winter quarters. Little wonder that the Sami people of Lappland call the Bluethroat "the bird of a thousand voices". These recordings of the Bluethroat's song were made with the Sony Digital System PCM 2000 (DAT-Recorder); the Red-spotted Bluethroat with a Neumann RSM 190 stereo-microphone with windshield, and the White-spotted Bluethroat with 2 Sennheiser MKH 30 microphones using the "Bl�mlein" technique; here too, a shield had to be used because of the strong wind.

Hessisches Staatsorchester Wiesbaden / Siegfried K�hler: conductor / Bl�ser Ensemble Mainz / Klaus Rainer Sch�ll: conductor / Kreisler Trio / Bodo Hersen: viola.

Siegfried Mauser, who has already recorded Hindemith's complete works for cello and piano for WERGO with Julius Berger, inaugurates with this CD a complete recording of Hindemith's piano music on five CDs. The booklet reprints an extensive, essential essay by Friederike Becker that provides an introduction to the young Hindemith's aesthetic world and a detailed commentary on the piano works included here. Siegfried Mauser: piano.

This recording consists of three of my early compositions produced at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. The first two of them, especially "Dreamsong", became very well-known and influential in the filed of electroacoustic music and have received many honors. In those early days of computer music my colleagues and I were pioneering the development and use of many of the techniques of digital synthesis, recording, and sound processing that are now commonplace. Due to the almost fanatical emphasis on sound quality that was then a part of the CCRMA atmosphere, these works continue to stand on a par with the best that current instruments can produce. I hope that you will experience some of the excitement and inspiration that I felt in bringing this unusual music to life. (Michael McNabb)

"What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing"(Steve Reich, 1968). Minimal music, which numbers Steve Reich among its founders and as one of its most significant representatives, existed for hardly more than ten years. The Ensemble Avantgarde presents a wonderful survey of Reich's minimal music-compositions. The conceptional concentration in the musical work on the structurally simple means of its creation is seen especially in Reich's "Pendulum Music", which is presented here in three different versions. Strict minimal music ended with "Phase Patterns" of 1970. The Ensemble Avantgarde is an association of musicians in Leipzig who are dedicated to the performance of 20th-century music. Since its founding in 1989, the ensemble has worked with a variable membership under the artistic and organizational direction of Steffen Schleiermacher. Concert tours have taken the group through many European countries, East Asia, and South America. Numerous radio productions and CDs document the work of the ensemble. They have been specially recognized through a grant from the Ernst von Siemens Foundation and the Schneider-Schott Prize given by the city of Mainz.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. Savouret, Alain / Lindwall, Christer / Oppenheim, Daniel V.

The piano cycles played by Herbert Henck on this double CD - Hymns from a Great Temple, Dances and Chants of the Seids (accompanied by Trilok Gurtu on the daff), Seekers of the Truth, and Melody for the Enneagram - are a collaboration between the mystic Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann. It is a unique document of cultural history and spirituality.

In a commentary on the group of works called "Tradition", Dieter Schnebel writes that he wishes to track down what is urgent and lively in the time-honoured forms and contexts of the past and lead them to a new present and future in a dynamic way. As one of the most significant works in which that is displayed with great clarity, the "Missa" stands out from Schnebel's oeuvre. "Missa" has got an ecumenical and political character: elements of every kind of Christian church music - and also music of the synagogue - are incorporated into it. Over and above this it acquires a specific connection with Berlin: in memory of the "Bekennende Kirche" [confessing church] in particular of Martin Niemoller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth and the first performance (1988) took place in the Church of Jesus Christ in Dahlem, where Martin Niemoller once preached and which was once the centre of the church resistance movement against the Nazis. "Missa" ends with the "Dona nobis pacem" in a multi-lingual cry for peace - rebellion and unfulfilled plea in one. This production received the quarterly German Record Critics' Award!

The first works of Cage are experimental and related to the future. "The Future of Music" - a Credo" is the title of his first manifesto, and this future bears the name "all-sound music". Peter Roggenkamp: piano / Schola Cantorum Stuttgart / Clytus Gottwald: conductor / John Cage: speaking part.