Mauricio Kagel

Various Artists - 75 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage 1921-1996 (1996) {12CD Set, Col Legno} (Complete Artwork)
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© 1996 Col Legno | WWE 12CD 31899
Classical / Modern Classical / Musique Concrète / Avant-Garde

The Donaueschinger Musiktage is an annual music festival, providing a platform for contemporary composers in the eponymous south German town. In 1996 col legno published a 12-CD set with highlights of the (then) 75 years history of the event, complete with an illustrated 125-page booklet. 15 hours of exciting modernist compositions from Stravinsky to Lachenmann. The first of these festivals was held in 1921 but there were interruptions in the Nazi years.

This 12-CD album features 45 separate works of Peter Schat, going roughly in chronological and opus number order. Space does not permit a full discussion here of all 45 selections. Rather, this review will make more general observations, with some comments on interesting facets or individual quirks of this album.

75 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage (1921-1996) - this interesting and amazing Box Set offers to meet with the most celebrated masters and composers in the history of music and get acquainted with their creativity.

Gottfried Michael Koenig - Acousmatrix 1|2, The Electronic Works (1990) {2CD Set BVHAAST CD 9001-2}
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© 1990 BVHAAST | CD 9001|2
Electronic / Electroacoustic / Avant-Garde / Experimental Electronic

Composing and generating sound via computer technology as early as the mid-'60s, Gottfried Michael Koenig was a pivotal force in cementing the emerging relationship between music and electronics. Born in Magdeburg, Germany in 1926, Koenig studied composition at the Detmold School of Music before relocating to Bonn, where he pursued his interest in computer engineering. Between 1954 and 1964, he worked alongside Karlheinz Stockhausen at the electronic music studios of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne, collaborating with other aspiring composers including György Ligeti and Mauricio Kagel; in 1956, Koenig completed his first major electronic piece, Klangfiguren II, followed a year later by Essay.

It starts, appropriately enough, with Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question, which seems to hold its breath, and occasionally exhale in brief bursts of panic, as the new century unfolds. It ends with Dmitri Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony Op. 110a (based on his String Quartet No. 8), whose alternating sequences of anguish, alarm, and derision come as close as possible for absolute music to indicting its bloody history - eight CDs and over 30 works later.

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Gruppen & Carré (1992) {Stockhausen-Verlag No. 5}
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© 1955-60, 1992 Stockhausen-Verlag | Stockhausen 5
Classical / Avant-Garde / Experimental / Contemporary Classical / 20th Century

Since 1991, a complete edition of all recordings in which Karlheinz Stockhausen has personally participated is being released on compact discs. Each CD in this series is identified by Stockhausen's signature followed by an encircled number. The numbers indicate the general historical order of the works. Stockhausen realised the electronic music and participated in these recordings as conductor, performer, sound projectionist, and musical director. He personally mixed down the recordings, mastered them for CDs, wrote the texts and drew the covers.