Henry Cowell

At last, a re-issue of the 1963 recording of Cowell playing several of his piano works in his casual style, so that the listener regards the unusual sounds and techniques as completely natural within the context of each piece's imagery. A recording of the complete piano works is definitely needed, but this CD, with Cowell's spoken commentary at the end, is a precious thing to have at the moment.

All four American composers on this new album by the Basque National Orchestra and conductor Robert Trevino wrote music that was known, played and esteemed during their lifetimes, but none of them ever had a huge 'hit': the pieces here are likely familiar only to musical scholars. Yet while it is uncommon enough to find Charles Martin Loeffler, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles and Howard Hanson sharing the same album, the conductor Robert Trevino has taken his exploration still further, into the recesses of their repertory – complete with a Hanson piece, Before the Dawn, that has had to wait a century for this, its premiere recording. Robert Trevino’s debut album with the Basque National Orchestra on Ondine featured orchestral works by Maurice Ravel and has received excellent reviews in music media around the world.

Under Mahan Esfahani’s hands—and occasionally fists—the harpsichord is transmogrified into an elemental force, by turns supported or menaced by an astonishing arsenal of electronics. Concerned listeners please note: no harpsichords were harmed in the making of this album.

John J. Becker - Soundpieces 1-7 (2020) {2CD Set, New World Records Digital Issue}
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Classical / Contemporary Classical / Ultramodern

John J. Becker (1886-1961) is the least known of a group of composers who, by reputation, became known as "the American Five," analogous to the better-known "Russian Five" or "French Six." Becker's cohorts consisted of Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, and Charles Ives. Ives, born 1874, was the oldest of the group and Cowell, born 1897, was the youngest, and in the 1920s and '30s they were known as the most radical and dissonant of American composers.

James Tenney - Pika-Don - Maelström Percussion Ensemble Conducted By Jan Williams (2004) {Hat Hut Records hat[now] ART 151}
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© 1997, 2004 Hat Hut Records | hat[now] ART 151
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Percussion

Tenney has often characterized himself as a kind of “tone scientist”, that is, one working on an almost microscopic level with the primary materials of sound in order to expand our knowledge of its properties (what makes it what it is) and perceptual identity (how we respond to it). To do so, he has composed music that isolates the components of sound production into their most basic acoustic phenomena; music that explores and illuminates the subatomic pitch relationships within the harmonic series; music that combines these pitches into complexes motivated by systematic patterns or chance procedures.

Pieces by nine very different composers make up this fascinating collection of works for string quartet entitled Short Stories, performed by the Kronos Quartet. Elliott Sharp's Digital (1986) is a hard-edged rhythmic study using the instrument bodies as drums, with objects inserted in the strings to create rattling, shaker, and tambourine-like sounds. Steve Mackey's arrangement (1989) of the classic Chicago blues tune "Spoonful" (1960), by the prolific Willie Dixon, exaggerates the gestures of the song and employs complex harmonies and modernistic devices like string crunches, etc. John Oswald's Spectre (1990) opens with the naive sound of the quartet tuning up.