Irvine Arditti Jeu de Tarot

Irvine Arditti has been responsible for having given the world premières of a number of large scale works especially written for him. These include Xenakis’ Dox Orkh and Hosokawa’s Landscape III, both for violin and orchestra, as well as Ferneyhough’s Terrain, Francesconi’s Riti Neurali and Body Electric, Dillon’s Vernal Showers, Harvey’s Scena, Pauset's Vita Nova, Reynolds Aspiration and Sciarrino's Le Stagioni Artificiali all for violin and ensemble. He has also been responsible for the creation of many solo works including both of Ferneyhough’s solo violin works, Intermedio and Unsichtbare Farben. He was also responsible for inspiring John Cage to complete his Freeman Etudes giving the first complete performance of them in 1991.

Violinist Irvine Arditti, pianist Claude Helffer, and the Spectrum ensemble conducted by Guy Protheroe produce consummate performances of the Greek avant-gardist's unwieldy chamber music. If you're familiar with Xenakis's career you'll know he was trained in mathematics and enjoyed a successful career as an architect. Such background might prepare you for the music's preoccupation with line, volume, and form in an unusually abstract way, but it won't prepare you for its visceral, almost primitive power. On Akanthos, the singer Penelope Walmsley-Clark must cope with what is surely one of the most ridiculous soprano parts ever written.

Over and above his legendary career as leader of the Arditti Quartet, Irvine Arditti has worked on many solo projects and is still today one of the foremost interpreters of the music of our time. Over the past decade he has given the world premieres of a whole host of large-scale works written especially for him. His approach to the contemporary violin is fascinating. The works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Elliott Carter, Emmanuel Nunes and Pierre Boulez assembled in this album are among the most widely known in the recent repertory for violin, both on account of the transcendental character of the pieces themselves and the impetus they have given the instrument’s technique, but also and above all because of the accomplishment manifest in the variety of their modes of expression.

Toshio Hosokawa is a Japanese composer born in Hiroshima. This release brings together three concertos written by Hosokawa since his first mature works in the late eighties. They range over a period of roughly ten years, and are each marked by similar musical concerns, concerns treated in different ways according to the particular instrumental forces utilised.

Achterland is the film adaptation of a stage production of the same name from 1990. The film was shot in the set of the stage production in the Rosas rehearsal studio.

Le Tirage astrologique du Tarot s'adresse autant au Tarologue débutant qu'au professionnel. …