Olivier Varese

Since the end of the seventeenth century French composers have shown a particular skill and deftness of touch in writing for the flute. The instrument owes much of its prominence in French music of the twentieth century to the use made of it in orchestral colouring by composers such as Debussy and Ravel, as well as to a group of highly gifted players associated in one way or another with the Paris Conservatoire. They include the soloist on this recording, Patrick Gallois, a pupil of Jean-Pierre Rampal. This collection of works composed during the last sixty years ranges from Poulenc’s Sonata, marked by rhythmic vitality and a delicate vein of sentimentality, Messiaen’s Le merle noir, inspired by bird song, to Boulez’s Sonatine, which the composer himself has characterised as ‘organised delirium’.

Dans un premier temps, nous dirions qu'ils ne sont pas comme nous. Dans un second temps, il devient que ce serait plutôt nous qui ne sommes pas comme eux. Eux, les Rapaces, qui détiennent la force, l'arrogance de la richesse, la mémoire des siècles passés. Ce n'est que lorsque le danger se précisera que les Rapaces réagiront. Au risque de tout basculer...

A Revolution In Sound looks at the influence of modern classical music, the avant-garde and free jazz on pop and pop culture, during the second half of the twentieth century. In the mid-1960s, as pop music acquired a greater sophistication and maturity, artists began to make more ambitious musical and conceptual statements. In the search for new ideas, pop began to find inspiration along the spectrum of classical music – from Stockhausen to Sibelius – and from artists who inhabited the outer reaches of jazz, drawing even on the classical music of Northern India with its roots in the antique past.

A Revolution In Sound looks at the influence of modern classical music, the avant-garde and free jazz on pop and pop culture, during the second half of the twentieth century. In the mid-1960s, as pop music acquired a greater sophistication and maturity, artists began to make more ambitious musical and conceptual statements. In the search for new ideas, pop began to find inspiration along the spectrum of classical music – from Stockhausen to Sibelius – and from artists who inhabited the outer reaches of jazz, drawing even on the classical music of Northern India with its roots in the antique past.

2013 three CD set, a 40 year salute to the pioneers of 20th-Century Experimental and Electronic music. Highlights the work of key European and US-based composers and the integration of electronic experimentation into soundtracks and mainstream pop. Featured composers, producers and performers include Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Louis & Bebe Barron, Miklós Rózsa, Sun Ra, Les Baxter and Joe Meek.