Clara Sola+

The contralto Nathalie Stutzmann was not yet 30 years of age when she made this extraordinarily dramatic recording of arias from Handels Italian operas. It showcases her impressive depth of tone, a voice of tremendous indeed, in these days, almost unrivalled projection that inevitably brings to mind the great contraltos of yore from Clara Butt to Marian Anderson. Stutzmann was, and remains, however, an entirely modern artist, who has continued to innovate in her choice of repertoire and musical partners.

How do Scelsi's works for solo piano and piano chamber works fit into his ouvre? Most of his numerous piano compositions were written in two batches, from 1930 to 1943 and from 1952 to 1956 (if one wants to trust the dates of composition given by Scelsi, who intended to fool musicologists). […] When after more then a decade-long psychic crisis, Scelsi resumed composing for the piano, he fell back upon techniques he had used in his early works, namely motivic organization contrasted by somewhat amorphous pitch or sound centers. Yet, more and more of these pieces focus on the repetition of single pitches. They also reveal meditative aspects which are emphasized by such Sanskrit-derived subtitles as Bot-ba - An evocation of Tibet with its monasteries in the high mountains: Tibetan rituals, prayers and dances, (Suite No. 8, 1952), Ttai (Suite No. 9), or Ka (Suite No. 10).