Orient Classical Music

Listening to this selection of music from East and West so ingeniously put together by Jordi Savall is no ordinary experience. In addition to the aesthetic emotion, we feel another that is even more intense – a sense of magical communion with reconciled humanity.
One can’t help feeling that, with the simultaneous demise of both Sepharad and Al-Andalus in the second half of the 15th century, only forty years after the fall of Byzantium, some part of the human soul was also lost. Those events led to the destruction of intellectual and spiritual bridges between East and West that have never since been repaired. Once the fertile hub of our cultural universe, the Mediterranean became a battlefield and a barrier between peoples.

Iannis Xenakis - Alpha & Omega (2011) {4CD Set Accord–Universal Music France, ACCORD 4804904}
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© 2011 Universal Music France / Accord / Decca | ACCORD 4804904
Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Classical / Experimental

Universal Music pays tribute to the composer with this keenly priced 4 CD set. Most of the recordings found here are making a comeback to the catalogue, some are first time onto CD. Ten years after his death, the innovativeness of his music has lost none of its force and clearly marks him out as an essential composer of our time. “this is an extraordinary collection of pieces; several of which are among the most ear-stretchingly dissonant, exciting and uncompromising you’ll ever hear…And however hard it is to pin down exactly why, Xenakis’s wildest outbursts always sound controlled, cunningly organised…None of this music is easy listening, but it’s impossible not to be impressed by such craggy, exhilarating physicality.”

This album features the complete works for flute (to date) by Franco-Ukranian composer Dimitri Tchesnokov (b.1982), with the exception of his flute trio Tableaux feìeìriques. This programme is supplemented by some of Tchesnokov’s piano solos in a comparable style. The pieces presented here offer a contrast to the composer’s religious/mystical music (3 Chants sacreìs, Requiem, Ave Verum) and his historic/realistic works (Symphonie archaïque, Château de Grandval, Symphonie Ukrainienne).

The figure of George Frideric Handel cast a long shadow over musical London in the first half of the eighteenth century, condemning many of his contemporaries – fine composers themselves – to long years of obscurity. This recording throws light into forgotten corners and discovers some glittering gems, some of them demanding dazzling vocal fireworks from their performers. Several of these composers set scenes from Classical mythology or Old Testament narratives – but they also explore the underside of the Baroque psyche in one of David’s darkest psalms and in a representation of Arcadian madness.

Nominated for a Grammy (2002) for best Classical Album, Orient Occident represents the newest and, more importantly, epic portrayal of historical music to date. Regardless of any award, this album will continue its reputation as the most important record of new music in 2002, for the very fact that in the world of new music, Arvo Pärt is a puritan's feast. On the threshold of being a globally resonating composer, Pärt remains full of powerful ideas in film, stage, oratorio and orchestral music. Pärt's talent surmises the infinite variety of spiritual symbolism. He is a composer deeply rooted in the ancestrally religious past of his native Estonia. Further removed from Roman Catholic preaching, the Eastern European Orthodox church took to a more enlightening approach―renunciation. Pärt has, indeed, spent much of his time clarifying his search for richness in life's meaning. His work is as timeless as the art of work is meaningless. This meaningless struggle has dispirited Pärt's yearning soul, and with his newest music we are drawn to his misty, remote retreat. In Orient Occident, not only does Pärt recreate a shameless force of magnitude as a great work (three great works to be exact: "Wallfahrtslied", "Orient & Occident", and "Como Cierva Sedienta"), he has reorganized his approach making this change a revelatory turn from past familiar traits. Having rediscovered himself half dozen times before this year, Pärt introduces a lustrous version of his suffering, and a handsomely classical departure than previously heard. Pärt's climactic reinvention of his artistic path makes this album a sumptuous account of a composer charged with a silent worship.

"It was in the 18th century that the seraglio first excited Western European imagination, not least as a result of the Arabian Nights, which, first published in Europe in 1704, owed its immense and immediate popularity to its combination of the most daring intellectuality and consummate sensuality. With YEHUDI (the Ottoman word for Jew), L'Orient Imaginaire seeks to revive the centuries-old tradition of Jewish music at the court of Constantinople.
THE ANCIENT ORIENT, a land of vivid fantasies, fairy tales and legends. Throughout time, crusaders, adventurers, poets and lovers have all sought to unlock its languishing mysteries in order to gaze upon such a forbidden and unattainable world. In the end, they could only perceive the vision - the Orient of the imagination.".