Piano Sonatas
Chris Newman is a contemporary composer, painter, author and performance artist living in Berlin. This is the first recording of Newman’s Piano Sonatas, a large and important aspect to his work. The renowned British piano virtuoso and composer Michael Finnissy performs the four sonatas here. Newman and Finnissy have been collaborators for over a quarter century, ensuring definitive performances. Composer supervised recordings. Liner notes by the composer and Michael Finnissy. From 1976-79, C…
Epigram And Evolution: Complete Piano Works
These piano pieces were written at every turning point in Roger Reynolds’ creative life, marking his evolution. The music is driven by relentless attacks toward catharsis, but also bittersweet chords, and trembling, rolling, wandering or sweeping masses of sound. We feel as though we are being pushed around by forces beyond human imagination. This sense of being carried away by an uninterrupted undercurrent may be the image of the world we live in. The featured pianists are the legendary Yuji Ta…
Tracer - Chamber Works 1952-1999
Surround sound DVD. Earle Brown first encountered the work of Alexander Calder in 1948, whose mobile sculptures Brown saw as a visual embodiment of the variable (impermanent) aesthetic that he was striving to create. This Calder aesthetic stayed with Brown throughout his several stylistic shifts. Whether he was writing twelve-tone serial music (Music for Violin, Cello, and Piano), conceptual graphic scores (Folio and Four Systems), composed material open form scores (String Quartet, New Piece an…
The Art of the Curved Bow, Vol. 1
The Curved Bow, or BACH Bow, gives string-players the unique ability to play up to all four strings simultaneously — an impossibility with today's bow. Some believe that the curved bow was used during Bach's time, in the 20th century it was championed by the likes of Albert Schweitzer. It is a device with incredible potential for new and old repertoire, shedding new musical light on the works in which it is employed. Michael Bach has been playing with the curved bow for many years, continually d…
The Echoing Green
** 2021 Stock ** Like Morton Feldman, whose music he acknowledges as an influence Walter Zimmermann (b.1949) is fascinated by the relationship between painting and music, and how material of an apparently simple nature played by apparently “normal” instruments is capable of almost infinite subtlety. Frankfurt’s HCD Ensemble are also members of Germany’s infamous Ensemble Modern. They are joined here by the superb violinist Peter Rundel and cellist Michael Bach. Wüstenwanderung [Wandering in the …
Final Fragments - Piano Music of David Kotlowy
** Edition of 100 hand-numbered copies. Notes by Jon Dale ** By the time I landed in Adelaide somewhere in the mid 1990s, to complete my secondary schooling and get the hell out of dodge – the tiny country hamlet that I’d been living in, in the northern parts of the Upper Hunter in New South Wales, at the foot of the Barrington Tops – I’d already been indoctrinated into a set of ideals through my reading, listening, and the questionable guidance of a few family members. Foremost was a kind of id…
Idle Hands - Music of Luke Altmann
** 2021 Stock. Comes in a four panel case with 16 page booklet, designed by Sam Songailo ** Russian pianist Konstantin Shamray studied in Moscow at the Russian Gnessin Academy of Music with Professors Tatiana Zelikman and Vladimir Tropp, and the Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany with Professor Tibor Szasz. In 2008, Konstantin won First Prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition. Konstantin has performed with the Russian National Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Mos…
La Terre et le Feu
** 2021 Stock ** This disc of French composer Joël-François Durand’s music amplifies his ongoing interest in the classical ‘four elements’: air, earth, fire and water. World class performers include the London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Pierre-André Valade, and renowned Swedish organist Hans-Ola Ericcsson. The oboe concerto, La terre et le feu features a hallmark of Durand’s work: rising figures that gradually strain upwards. The work consists of an introduction and four prin…
Out of Chaos
** 2021 Stock ** An American who came of age in the late 1980s, Jason Eckardt’s music captures the essences of the genres that led him first to performance (as a guitarist), and then to composition: heavy metal and art rock, jazz, gagaku and p’ansori, the Second Viennese School, American post-serialism, and the new complexity. It evokes the power of inspired, virtuosic improvisation, the incisiveness of classical ensemble playing, and the raw expressivity of ethnic music. The first complete CD o…
Labyrinthe de Minotaur
** 2021 Stock ** French composer Alain Bancquart (b.1934) is one of the leading composers of microtonal music in Europe. Labyrinthe du Minotaur explores the myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinthe. This large scale piece constantly delves into microtonal and harmonic relationships together with a lyrical polyphony. It is based on texts by his wife, author Marie-Claire Bancquart. The unusual instrumental ensemble incorporates (in addition to the above musicians): pianos in quarter- and sixteenth-…
Shadow of an Idea
** 2021 Stock ** The influence of two American composers – John Cage and Morton Feldman – has been decisive on Walter Zimmermann. With Cage, it was his music from the late forties – works like the String Quartet, the Suite for Toy Piano and the Six Melodies – that caught his attention: works underpinned by precise numerical construction, yet with an engaging directness of expression. Feldman has been an inspiration to Zimmermann’s lyrical impetus, and Cage to his constructivist urges. Yet the t…
Look She Said (Complete Works For Bass)
** 2021 Stock ** “The double-bass – the paradox of its large size and basically quiet sound, and its low registral grounding – has long attracted me. I’ve also been fortunate in knowing outstanding double-bass players.” – Christian Wolff This disc collects all of Wolff’s large body of works for the bass, including a piece for solo electric bass guitar. Two of the works were written specifically for Robert Black, who prepared these pieces with Wolff. The composer attended all of the recordings se…
Dancing With Henry
** 2021 Stock ** Some of the most revered compositions of the twentieth century arose from the collaboration of composers and choreographers. Henry Cowell sought solutions that would treat both art forms with equal respect. Works on this disc-the majority of which are recorded for the first time, many from unpublished manuscripts-were composed for Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman (Dance of Sport), Bonnie Bird, and Martha Graham (Heroic Dance and Suite for Woodwind Quintet). Atlantis was envisione…
Octet • Music For A Large Ensemble • Violin Phase
*Includes 24-page booklet with photos and liner notes* Steve Reich's commercial success had ballooned after his prior release on ECM, Music for 18 Musicians, and this collection of three compositions, two new and one from 1967, was the follow-up. Music for a Large Ensemble is very much of a piece with the prior work, using extended melodic lines, a larger palette of sound colors, and key changes every several minutes. It's charming and pleasantly busy in an industrious way but really covers litt…
Spiral - Pole
Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Kurzwellen” for six players (1968). Spiral for a soloist with a shortwave receiver together with Pole (Poles), for two performers with shortwave radio receivers and a sound projectionist, is one of a series of works dating from the 1960s which Stockhausen designated as "process" compositions. These works in effect separate the "form" from the "content" by presenting the performers with a series of transformation signs which are to be applied to material that may vary con…
In Memoriam Paul Zukofsky
** 2021 Stock ** CP² Recordings presents In Memoriam Paul Zukofsky. This album presents the last music program designed by the late violinist/conductor Paul Zukofsky. Both Monkeys At Play and Josef Hauer’s Zwölftonspiel are first recordings. The program served as his New York memorial concert in 2017 played by pianists Aaron Likness and Andrew Zhou. All recordings were made at Oktaven Audio in Mount Vernon, NY on August 22-24, 2019, recorded and edited by Ryan Streber, mastered by Ian Turner.
Ch…
Shapey - Riegger - Piston - Crumb - Sollberger - Berger
** 2021 Stock ** CP² Recordings presents Shapey - Riegger - Piston - Crumb - Sollberger - Berger. Ralph Shapey: (1921-2002) Evocation For Violin, Piano, And Percussion; with Raymond Desroches, percussion; Publisher: Theodore Presser Co. Wallingford Riegger: (1885-1961) Sonatina; Publisher: E. B. Marks Music Corporation. Walter Piston: (1894-1976) Sonatina; Publisher: Boosey and Hawkes, Inc. George Crumb: (1929-) Night Music Ii; Publisher: C.F. Peters, Inc. Harvey Sollberger: (1938-) Solos; with …
Duo for Violin and Piano, Sonata for Violin / Sonata Concertante / Second Sonata
** 2021 Stock ** CP² Recordings presents Roger Sessions: Duo for Violin and Piano, Sonata for Violin; Peter Mennin: Sonata Concertante; Easley Blackwood: Second Sonata. Performed by Paul Zukofsky, violin; Gilbert Kalish, Easley Blackwood, pianos. The Sessions Duo for Violin and Piano and the Mennin Sonata Concertante were both recorded at Paul Hall, The Juilliard School, NY in 1971. They were engineered by Horace W. Grenell and originally released as part of the Desto set "Music for a 20th Centu…
Dance and Secret & Joy and Peace
** 2021 Stock ** CP² Recordings presents Artur Schnabel: Dance and Secret & Joy and Peace; Sonata for Solo Violin performed by Paul Zukofsky, Conductor and Violinist; The Gregg Smith Singers. Dance and Secret & Joy and Peace by Artur Schnabel were recorded February, 1993 at BMG (originally RCA) Studio A, New York City. Producer: Joanna Nickrenz. Sound Engineer: Jay Newland. Montage: PZ, with Elite Recordings, New York City. Mastering: Soundbyte Productions, New York City. Sonata for Solo Violin…
Five Stanzas / Pelleas & Melisande, Op. 5
** 2021 Stock ** CP² Recordings presents Dane Rudhyar: Five Stanzas; Arnold Schoenberg: Pelleas & Melisande, Op. 5 by Colonial Symphony and Sinfóníuhljómsveit Æskunnar; Paul Zukofsky, conductor. Sinfóníuhljómsveit Æskunnar (the Youth Orchestra of Iceland) was founded in 1985, by Paul Zukofsky, and was a continuation of the "Zukofsky Seminars in Orchestral Music" which began in 1977, and were sponsored by the Reykjavik College of Music. The aim of both groups was to provide an opportunity for Ice…