Contemporary Music Score

This disc is a wonderful way to showcase Leif Ove Andsnes’ pianistic talents in contemporary music; not a genre usually associated with him. It is much more than just an exercise in virtuosity, though it takes a real virtuoso to make these at times knotty works sound as spontaneous as they do here. The program is well balanced, too, beginning and ending with solo pieces by the Dane Bent Sørensen that frame two major piano concertos. Eight selections from Kurtág’s continuing series of miniature “games,” forms the disc’s midpoint. Not all the works presented are of equal quality, though. I found the two Sorensen pieces rather slight in comparison with the other works and have not completely made up my mind about Dalbavie’s Piano Concerto. There is no doubt, however, that Lutosławski’s Piano Concerto and the Kurtág Játékok selections are masterpieces that have gained a foothold in the late twentieth-century repertoire.

The ten one-hour Dekalog films are set around the same modern Warsaw apartment building. Each film deals with a theme - love, marriage, infidelity, parenthood, guilt, faith, compassion - exploring the relevance of one of the Ten Commandments, showing how people deal with moral dilemma in their everyday lives. The soundtrack for nine of the ten Dekalog films marks the point where the creative relationship and friendship between Preisner and Kieslowski first flowered and contains the seeds of much of Preisner's later work. (Kieslowski and Preisner decided that Dekalog X would not require an original music score). The music was recorded by Zbigniew Malecki and Aleksander Dowsilas at Radiowy Dom Sztuki Studio, Katowice.

Now in his sixty-fourth year and three years the junior of his composer brother David, it is hard to believe that Colin Matthews is approaching an age whereby that affectionate, if paradoxically unflattering tag of 'elder statesman' amongst British composers might be applied.
Something of an English Magnus Lindberg in his mastery of huge orchestral canvases and forces such as those employed in the Fourth and Fifth orchestral Sonatas, Matthews' considerable influence as a composer has been mirrored by his extra-curricular activities as a ……..

Christopher Thomas @ musicweb-international.com

Elie Siegmeister - Piano Music Vol.2 (1999)
Classical | EAC: FLAC+Cue+Log | 1 Cd, Covers | 266 Mb
Label: Naxos - Date: 1999

Elie Siegmeister (b. January 15, 1909, New York City – March 10, 1991, Manhasset, New York) was an American composer, educator and author. His varied musical output showed his concern with the development of an authentic American musical vocabulary. Jazz, blues and folk melodies and rhythms are frequent themes in his many song cycles, his nine operas, his eight symphonies, and his many choral, chamber, and solo works. His 37 orchestral works have been performed by leading orchestras throughout the world under such conductors as Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Lorin Maazel, and Sergiu Comissiona. He also composed for Hollywood (notably, the film score of They Came to Cordura, starring Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth, 1959) and Broadway ("Sing Out, Sweet Land," 1944, book by Walter Kerr).

Kremer made this recording in 1984 and it is an extraordinary recital, mostly of contemporary pieces for solo violin meant as homages to Paganini and especially his famous 24th Caprice. Milstein's Paganiniana is only an appetizer, a fine set of variations but quite conventional in outlook. On the other hand Rochberg's Caprice Variations (of which Kremer plays only a selection of 24, in a rearranged order, out of its 50 total, the 51st being a short statement of Paganini's 24th) is an extraordinary catalog of wild contemporary violin sounds, colors and effects put at the service of a spellbinding imagination.

"Between Two Waves" marks the latest chapter in the story of GoGo Penguin. Formed in 2012, GoGo Penguin's sophomore album v2.0 was nominated in 2014 for the Mercury Music Prize and in 2016, in addition to playing Coachella, the trio signed to Blue Note Records, releasing a trio of acclaimed albums: Man Made Object, A Humdrum Star and GoGo Penguin, as well as two EPs and a remix album GGP/RMX. They were Blue Note’s best-selling contemporary instrumental artists and sold in excess of 300,000 albums.

Giya Kancheli is not a member of any compositional "school", but in its profoundly simple means of expression and its mystical preoccupation with time, space, and motion, his music shares similarities with several other 20th-century Eastern European composers. From a primordial mix of musical elements, Kancheli seems not to compose in a formal sense, but rather guides the formation of melodic and rhythmic forces–what he calls a "musical progression", in which "silence turns into music". If this sounds just too strange to you, listen to the music, which is completely natural, fascinating, and beautiful.(MDC Classic)