★Col Legno
Wetterminiaturen
Ruedi Häusermann’s compositions melodies surface to be swallowed again, a breeze rises and gets lost in sounds, impulses, thunderstorms; melodies are created, are allowed to happen, and you find yourself listening raptly to their dis- integration. For building his worlds of sound the Swiss composer and theater maker has collaborated with the piano. He decided that this polyphonic instrument with its usually clearly defined tone and set ways of being played should be put on wheels so as to be mov…
Les Espaces Électroacoustiques II
The idea of exploring important 20th century electro-acoustic compositions within their historically informed performance practices, and using this as the basis for the production of a new interpretation in 5.1 surround sound, has created quite a stir. It originated at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) at the Zurich University of the Arts, and found its expression in the double SACD Les Espaces Électroacoustiques I. — This album now brings us further milestones of ele…
Les Espaces Électroacoustiques
Milestones of electroacoustic music – from Edgar Varèse’s Poème électronique (1958) to Brian Ferneyhough’s Mnemosyne (1986) – are investigated from a music-historical perspective and presented in a contemporary 5.1 surround edition.The selection of works on this double CD mirrors the development of electroacoustic music over a period of 30 years, from the early analogue studios to the shift to digital technology in the 1980s. It includes electronic compositions and works for instruments and e…
Cyclus
Upon first listening there can already be no doubt: music is for Samy Moussa a matter of personal expression and direct, bodily experience. The physical dimension of his compositions presents itself undistorted, in its overwhelming power and sonic quality. Something else also becomes immediately clear: that someone is reaching into the sound forcefully and emphatically, that he aims to overwhelm, to overpower, even to assault. Samy Moussa values the energetic, virile gesture, he would rat…
Pandora's Box
The Arditti Quartet is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and they are featured on the new Col Legno CD, with four premiere recordings of works by Rebecca Saunders, Benedict Mason, Luke Bedford and John Zorn. Each of the four pieces is a mini-masterpiece in its own right and the Arditti Quartet performs them all with the virtuosity and commitment they are renowned for. The result is a CD of powerful, gripping and great music!
“These four must be stopped…,” Paul Griffiths wrote more than…
Mouthpieces
In a laid-back manner and with apparently effortless ease the American composer involves her entire vocal apparatus in the making of music. And the way in which she integrates other musicians into her elaborately detailed cosmos of sound makes listening a rare treat and attests to a special talent. The musical elements revolve around each other, imitate each other, take turns. The intimate and familiar sound potential of the oral cavity is operated with brilliant skill to reveal a multitude of d…
In Four Parts (Tribute To John Cage)
Equipped with a modular synthesizer, a guitar and electronics Patrick Pulsinger and Christian Fennesz approach the master of the treatment of silence, John Cage. The piece on this album, which was recorded live at Wiener Konzerthaus, was inspired by the underlying attitude of Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts. Upon invitation by the WIEN MODERN festival the two legendary electronic music protagonists tackled the composer’s early string quartet, took it apart and adapted it for two players, alw…
Kontinent
Number 4 of the Salzburg Festival “Kontinent” series was dedicated to Wolfgang Rihm. We have compiled a selection of the works for your conven- ience – including a first recording! Wolfgang Rihm once claimed that the most appropriate statements about his oeuvre are his own compositions. In 2010 the Salzburg Festival adopted this approach. The result was a “Kontinent Rihm” which placed the manifold tone colors and modes of expression created by the former Stockhausen student into a broader contex…
Portrait
The works of Clemens Gadenstätter are a wonderful example to evidence how an analytical approach to the phenomenon of hearing may result in music that sincerely moves its listeners. This production, entitled “Portrait,” represents a kind of screen capture of Gadenstätter’s oeuvre. Portraits are sometimes given away as presents in order to convey something of the essence of whom or which they portray. Clemens Gadenstätter’s music is perfectly suited as such a gift. …
Mysterienszenen
Elmar Lampson’s music has got what is commonly referred to as “soul.” It becomes apparent in the way the music embraces the listeners and accompanies them through time in images of sound. The Mysterienszenen were inspired by the Mystery Dramas of Rudolf Steiner, with whose ideas Lampson (whose grandparents had personally witnessed Steiner’s performances) became acquainted already as a young man.Both works relate to the old tradition of confronting scientific knowledge with mystical knowledge. Ye…
Notturni
In the fall of 2011 the pianist Marino Formenti performed four one-hour solo concerts hosted by the Wien Modern festival. The so-called “Notturni” series was centered around the piano oeuvre of Friedrich Cerha. To celebrate the occasion Cerha wrote his first piece for solo piano in twenty years and dedicated it to Formenti. The pianist extraordinaire’s main objective in these performances was to contemplate the music jointly with his audience, to analyze and reanalyze the sounds of the in…
Stop Playing
Wolfgang Mitterer is playing the organ and leaves no tone unturned. The composer beams the traditional instrument straight into the 21st century – feel free to follow suit!The organ is a machine, and Wolfgang Mitterer certainly knows how to operate machines. Quite early on his passion for this complex instrument got hooked up to the manifold possibilities available in a digital studio setting; so, meanwhile the Austrian composer has become both: a much admired contemporary organist with a pencha…
3 Liederzyklen
Wolfgang Rihm sets poems from Heiner Müller, Hermann Lenz and Rainer Maria Rilke to music. Listen to a living document about one of the most important lied composers of our time.Wolfgang Rihm’s confrontations with the written word hold a special place among the more than 400 compositions he has written in the course of his long career. The composer, highly versed in reflecting on his own approaches and techniques, expands the textual material instead of labeling it, adding additional levels of m…
Sonatas
Markus Hinterhäuser shows us a terrific interpretation of the piano sonatas from the russian composer. Massive music!They say that Galina Ustvolskaya led a very secluded life, that she was a loner. It is amazing, though, how distinct an image of her emerges from the almost meditative way in which she immersed herself in structures, dynamics and combinations of pitches. And not only that. You can hear the concentration on her work and the contrasts within the scope of an existence, some even say…
Stanze
In his interpretation of the music from Osvaldo Coluccino, Alfonso Alberti takes us by the hand to lead us part of the way through our innermost being.What we hear seems like fractured piano music, like notes and sounds scattered in space: in his “Stanze,” Osvaldo Coluccino uses the piano’s resonant body to generate resonances in the spaces within us. He removes the windows, eliminates all opulence, and confronts us with environments that lie within ourselves. The light and the dimensions keep c…
Macbeth
The unspeakable evil in three nameless acts: We proudly present Salvatore Sciarrino’s Macbeth, recorded at the 2011 Salzburg Festival, released for the first time as an audio document!The infiltration of microorganisms of sound, restless reticence, ephemeral slitherings, whisperings, whizzings ... – and all of it develops a kind of intensity only the great Italian master is capable of creating. Salvatore Sciarrino’s opera Macbeth was presented in the fifth, and final, year of the Kontinent serie…
Die Geheimnisträge
A lovely audio book edition comprising more than six and a half hours of exceptional audio entertainment, read by Wolfram Berger and accompanied by music from the col legno catalogue. The legendary aktionist artist Günter Brus’ selection of music includes composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Luciano Berio, Morton Feldman, Olga Neuwirth, Luigi Nono, Salvatore Sciarrino, Franz Koglmann and others.
Music for checking e-mails
Good news from your mailbox! Mitterer makes music on the subject of ambient in an electronic environment. Two amazing CDs with radical backgrounds.Mitterer’s CD in hand is about background music as a relative term, it’s about communicating via ›electronic post‹, it’s about the missing link between analog and digital ambient environments. Because Mitterer creates his instruments and then uses them in a unique way, electronic music for him has a unique vocabulary, one which in this day and age of …
Massacre
In "massacre" Wolfgang Mitterer presents us with a passionate analysis of a timeless threesome: power, religion and violence. An opera for five singers, nine musical instruments and electronics.Based on Christopher Marlowe’s drama »The massacre at Paris«, Wolfgang Mitterer paints an acoustic picture of destruction, conspiracy and the thrill of power. His protagonists virtually rid themselves of their identities, turning into typological representations of different points of view. The concrete e…