Giacinto Scelsi

This collection of the late Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi marks the recorded debut of many of his smaller works. Ranging from 1954-1966, Scelsi's elongated tonal studies are given a rapt performance here by a nameless Dutch ensemble that carries off the task without flaw or unnecessary adornment (a constant temptation, it seems, with Scelsi's work). Included here are three fragments of I Riti, the ritual march from the composer's Funeral for Achilles.

From the introduction by Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini, Scientific director Isabella Scelsi Foundation: “This double CD again makes it possible, after a long interval, to experience the pleasure of listening to the complete version of the string quartets by Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) in the masterly interpretation by the Arditti Quartet, accompanied by two cornerstones of his production, Khoom and the Trio for strings. The CD was recorded shortly after the death of the Maestro and constitutes a precious witness for two series of reasons.

In this latest installment of recordings focusing on the choral traditions of different countrys choral music traditions launched last year by the Vokalensemble Stuttgart des SWR, we now arrive in sunny Italy, a country said to have no native choral tradition. Giuseppe Verdi of course used choirs in his operas, but apart from that there are only a few choral works that have sustained any place in the repertoire, some of the finest of which are presented here. With the beginning of the 20th century, however, one encounters composers that are less well known, but whom have certainly composed some very exciting music for choir, including Pizzetti, Giacinto Scelsi, Luigi Nono and Goffredo Petrassi.

Ensemble Avantgarde's 2013 release on MDG presents six pieces that sum up the ideas and techniques Giacinto Scelsi employed in his late semi-improvised works. Three are solos and three are duets, so the forces are small and limited in their potential for creating dense sonorities. Yet Scelsi's music wasn't always about microtonal drones played by large ensembles, or vast durations that made time seem irrelevant. Here, the strands of Scelsi's textures are exposed and clarified by isolating the instruments. Ko-Lho (1976) is transparent in its counterpoint, though the rapid changes between the flute and clarinet in register and gestures sometimes suggest the presence of a third unwritten part.

Carrier Records presents Ave Maria: Variations on a Theme by Giacinto Scelsi, an album-length work from composer Ian Power and Bay Area-pianist Anne Rainwater. Power unwinds the original melody of Scelsi’s 1972 hymn, over and over, into an obsessive meditation for performer and listener alike. What begins as lush chords and hammering bells is interrupted by a bizarre ritual where the pianist must perform an impossible task and be held musically accountable for their mistakes. Ave Maria’s relentless repetitions and uncannily tonal harmonies probe, exalt, and challenge religious concepts of devotion and interiority.

Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) was among the handful of composers I came to admire early on in my contemporary foraging. His galaxies opened my ears as only Gubaidulina, Ligeti, Penderecki, and Górecki could. Here was another whose ability to translate the instrumental utterance into an experience of integrity and parthenogenetic ecstasy, whose sheer reach of vision and inspiring attention to detail, shaped my impressionable mind into an open vessel. And while Scelsi’s music has been profoundly represented elsewhere (most notably on the Mode label), it was something of a momentous occasion for me to see his name fronting an ECM New Series cover at last.

The Complete Works for Flute and Clarinet: In both original works and transcriptions, the Ebony Duo explores Scelsi’s use of special sound colors and his coloring of sound. Transcriptions especially prepared by the clarinetist (and pianist) Michael Raster provide the basis for some of the works on the present album. Yet Scelsi’s original intentions incurred no damage as a result of this recrafting. To the contrary! “The formidable technical demands that playing on two strings with in part opposite dynamics places on the solo violinist certainly justify an adaptation for two instrumentalists – all the more so as Scelsi himself had already been concerned with the “third dimension”, the depth of sound, in connection wind instruments before, especially in the piece Ko-Lho for flute and clarinet.”