Composition / All styles

Three movements from 'Dirt Road' (2006), a 68-minute piece in 15 movements by Linda Catlin Smith, played by Mira Benjamin (violin) & Simon Limbrick (percussion), and released as part of the 'violin+1' series on Another Timbre in June 2016.

Michael Habermann made the first, and in many respects the best commercial recordings devoted to Kaikhosru Sorabji’s ridiculously difficult and overwrought piano works. As with Habermann’s previous three Sorabji discs, the present recital offers several sides of the composer: variation writer, miniaturist, paraphraser, and transcriber. Sorabji’s 1945 transcription of Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnol largely stays faithful to the original, save for decorative showers of bitonal arpeggios and runs that a…

The leading contemporary music ensemble Apartment House perform a new piece developing out of James Saunders's long-term modular project '#unassigned'. The new piece, 'assigned #15', was recorded in April this year and creates a mesmeric, dense, jungle-like soundworld across its 45 minutes. Beautifully realised by Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Bridget Carey (viola), Simon Limbrick (percussion), Nancy Ruffer (flutes), James Saunders (dictaphones & radio), Philip Thomas (piano) and Kerry Yong (chamb…

First CD featuring five mysterious works by a young English composer whose music gives voice to the secrets in sounds.'Martin Iddon's music asks a lot of us. This disc, pneuma, asks even more, because it conceals the 'real, physical human bod[ies]' that are so important to this music. Iddon asks musicians to play instruments they do not play, articulate notes they will not hear, and perform independently of partners they cannot ignore. The music depends wholly on the relationships those bodies …

* In Italian * L’arte contemporanea raccontata con lo sguardo di un’artista orientale che da anni studia la cultura occidentale, esplorando le sinergie tra arte e musica.L’autrice parte da Kandinsky e Schönberg, segue con passione le tracce di Duchamp, Cage e degli artisti di Fluxus, l’intreccio delle loro storie artistiche e personali. Giunge fino a Nam June Paik, padre della videoart.Con sguardo minimalista, in linea con i principi di Fluxus, disegna, attraverso gli incontri e le amicizie tra …

Sorabji's style was deeply indebted to the music of the Middle East, some forms of which, during performance, last for hours or days at a time: his piano writing is typically elaborate from the torrential upward sweep in Mouvementé (I) via the wild and spiky V to the grotesque hammering angularity of XXV - a fantastic Medtnerian march. The dramatic and passionate writing in between …

Mauricio Kagel by himself: the composer, theater maker, filmmaker, virtuoso, writer of radio plays and, on the whole, all-round talent conducts his own works.

Volume 2 of the CD documentation of the Berlin festival "Inventionen" (volume 1 containing Horatiu Radulescu's string quartet no. 4)a various artists retrospective sampler including recordings of works by the following composers: Hildegard Westerkamp, Salvatore Sciarrino, John Cage, Sainkho Namtchylak, Joe Jones, Giacinto Scelsi, Masanori Fujita, John Driscoll.Hildegard Westerkamp: Whisper Study (1975-79, Tape work, Inventionen 1986)Salvatore Sciarrino: Codex purpureus, Trio per archi (1968-1983…

This landmark recording of John Cage’s prepared piano works performed by Mario Bertoncini was recorded back in December 1991. The sonatas are divided into four groups, each divided by the less overtly structured, rhapsodic interlude pieces. Bertoncini sensitivity to the displaced sonic characteristics of the piano is remarkable and suggests a rigorous dedication to Cage’s work.

From the liner notes of Eric Salzman: “John Cage wrote for keyboards throughout most of his life. Most famously, he invented the so-called "prepared piano" but he also wrote for unprepared piano in both traditional and untraditional ways. His later piano works employ an almost ferocious complication and virtuosity at the outer limits of performer possibility. Earlier he used electronic extensions, chance and performer collaboration in complex ways. His early keyboard music was written for himsel…

From the liner notes by Tim Perkis: "Ellen Band's work... lies in the path it takes, leading one from listening to recordings of natural sounds to, before one knows it, being immersed in a dense and complex field of sound which, though built completely from natural elements, is something quite transcendent and otherworldly. Band's music seduces us into perceiving the sensuous properties of familiar sounds by building dense and complex sound environments out of these elements. By sheer sensory de…

Thirteen-limit just intonation, with the primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13 governing the tuning, the harmony, the rhythm and the form all at once. The twelve retuned notes yield seventy-five different intervals where equal temperament gives twelve. Brown was a piano tuner for fifteen years and tuned it himself.