Xenakis Ensemble

Classical Records of the Year – The Sunday Times, 17 December 1989
A stringent and sustained electro-acoustical experience is to be had from Iannis Xenakis’s magnum opos Kraanerg (70 mins long) as recorded on Etcetera by the Alpha Centauri Ensemble and Roger Woodward…..
The Times, Saturday November 1, 1989
…The music has ‘active energy in abundance. … The performance is dazzling, and I come firmly into the ‘bowled over’ rather than ‘baffled’ category… A.W…..
Diapason-Harmonie, Decembre 1989, Les Nouvelles
Rating 8 TTTT
Une très belle interprétation, vigoureuse et sanguine, résultant de vingt-trois exécutions de la version ballet par la Sydney Dance Company et l’Alpha Centauri Ensemble sous la direction inspirée de Roger Woodward…… read more
Sydney Morning Herald, 17 January 1990, Roger Covell: Caution : 70 minutes of untamed music…

Iannis Xenakis - Oresteïa - Ensemble de Basse-Normandie, Spiros Sakkas et al. (1990) {Salabert Actuels SCD8906 rec 1987}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 280 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 119 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 91 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1987, 1990 Salabert Actuels | SCD8906
Classical / Modern Classical / Experimental / Avant-Garde / 20th Century

Oresteïa [1966] for children's choir, mixed choir and instrumental ensemble, for solo baritone and percussionist soloist on Greek texts from Aeschylus. Kassandra is an independent work, but it is obligatorily interpreted when one plays Oresteïa (which includes three other parts: Agamemnon, Choéphores, Euménides). Spiros Sakkas gives an unheard of interpretation, alternating head and chest. Because the soothsayers are always double beings, between reason and delirium.

As an architect and mathematician, Iannis Xenakis brings an unusual eye to bear on his compositional ear. He rejected twelve-tone composition decades ago, instead pushing the envelope further on determinate numbers and sounds and generating a broader palette of available sounds. Graphical notation has been one of Xenakis's chief means of expression, allowing him to script sharply sliding glissandi and what he calls non-octave scales. This 2-CD set collects three string quartets and the busy, aching Akea, Xenakis's quintet for piano and strings. The unsurpassed Arditti String Quartet plays the ensemble pieces, and then farms out constituent members to play the solo and duo pieces. Pianist Claude Helffer creates pointed havoc on his three solo appearances, offering spare tones and dense steam alike. When playing with the Ardittis, Helffer makes himself central to the hard punch and slightly mad—extremely unconventional drama.

—Amazon.com

"I like the organ — but I have a particular flair for string instruments." Anyone who has a slight acquaintance with Iannis Xenakis's music will suspect that his liking for string instruments does not derive from early childhood memories or some other sentimental origin. The technical characteristics and sonorities of string instruments are so much part of his soundworld that we may well wonder if it did not actually develop out of string sound in the first place.
- Michael Struck-Schloen (from the attached booklet)

Isao Nakamura - Carter, Huber, Kagel, Pagh-Paan, Eötvös, Xenakis & Hosokawa: Works for Solo Percussion (2018) {NEOS Digital Download}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 208 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 140 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2018 Neos Music | NEOS10819
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Percussion

On this CD, Isao Nakamura presents a selection of works for solo percussion which – despite some very demanding technical passages – do not focus primarily on technical brilliance but on clear, focused artistic ideas, as well as, in some cases, extra-musical concepts. The main focus here is on drums. As the only instruments tuned to a specific pitch, in this CD the timpani features in two movements of Elliott Carter's "Eight Pieces for Four Timpani" and in Peter Eötvös's "Thunder".