Xenakis Ensemble

When Niels Rosing-Schow was growing up, Danish music was adapting to the New Simplicity of Henning Christiansen, Ole Buck and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. European ears were growing familiar with the slow, crystalline musical metamorphoses of György Ligeti. From the Paris of Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail and Iannis Xenakis came the suggestion that sound and harmony might just be the same thing.

This Alpha Productions release, Mysterious Morning, is the first full-length disc by the Quatuor Habanera, a French saxophone quartet founded in 1993 and dedicated to the exploration of the ever-expanding universe of music being created for this instrumental combination. The main event for many listeners will be the inclusion of a late Iannis Xenakis work, Xas (1987).

Friedrich Cerha (b. 1926) is revealed by this great 2-disc Kairos set to be one of the great composers of the late 20th Century, who deserves to be recognized alongside Xenakis, Ligeti, Nono, Stockhausen, and Boulez. Cerha was the 2012 recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the "Nobel Prize of music," and so his reputation and stature outside of Austria are belatedly coming to more closely match the esteem he enjoys in his own country. Cerha's own music has only been extensively documented recently, with a series of discs on Austrian neuemusik label Kairos, as well as recordings on the ECM, Col Legno, and Neos labels.

Since its formation in 1969, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet has appeared regularly at the major concert halls in Europe, Asia and the U.S.: Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center New York, Kennedy Center Washington D.C., Opera Bastille Paris, Royal Festival Hall London, Philharmonie Cologne, Finlandia Hall Helsinki, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Schauspielhaus Berlin, Musikverein Vienna, Tonhalle Zürich, Parco della Musica Rome, Dewan Filharmonik Petronas Kuala Lumpur, National Concert Hall Taipei, etc. The Vienna “Zeitung” hailed the quartet as the “Uncrowned Kings of the Saxophone” and a critic from “Die Welt” claimed, “If there were an Olympic discipline for virtuoso wind playing, the Raschèr Quartet would definitely receive a gold medal.”

Matthias Pintscher - Figura I-V & Other Works - Teodoro Anzellotti, Arditti Quartet (2004) {Winter & Winter 910 097-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 306 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 188 Mb
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© 2004 Winter & Winter | 910 097-2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Chamber Music

2004 marks the 30th Anniversary of the Arditti String Quartet, which once again demonstrates its commitment to the advancement of New Music–this time by the young German Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971). For the discerning listener of New Music, this disc offers both substance and style. Winter & Winter's packaging is exquisite and attractive (although I haven't figured out why the booklet offers nine blank pages followed by two pages of track and publisher information, when brief liner notes or at least some biographical information–especially in the case of a young composer–would be helpful not only in giving context to the works performed but also in establishing a base listenership).

Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994) was the pre-eminent member of a group of Polish composers that came to prominence after the Second World War and whose artistic advancement was given impetus by the death of Stalin in 1953. The works in this set cover four decades of Lutosławski's career and include most of his important orchestral works, starting with the early Symphonic Variations, his first and second symphonies and the Concerto for Orchestra, perhaps his best-known work.

It may seem paradoxical to expect versatility as a principal endowment from an ensemble that plays hardly any music composed before 1900, but after listening to the Arditti String Quartet one can only agree with the players' contention that the 20th-century repertory offers an unprecedented universe of stylistic variety. The literature demands everything from manic, cacophonous sliding and lightning-fast bowing to lushly harmonized chordal passagess. In this disc, "Arditti" hops challengingly among several idiosyncratic styles. Conlon Nancarrow's canonic Quartet No. 3 itself inhabits several worlds, wavering between driven, straightforward counterpoint and disconnected pianissimo bursts. As for the rest, also offers warm-toned accounts of Ruth Crawford Seeger's lightly dissonant Quartet, Mr. Reynolds's chillingly picturesque "Coconino" and Iannis Xenakis's "Tetras," which begins with a rubbery cello swoop and evolves into an otherworldly sonority of a kind that used to be the sole province of electronic music. What the Arditti proves is that you can travel the twentieth-century musical landscape without losing your orientation.

Pi Recordingsis pleased to welcome saxophonist/ flutist/ composer Anna Webber(b. 1984) as the latest addition to the label’sfamily. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, she has been an active performer and bandleader on the New York scene for the last decade, appearing with Matt Mitchell(A Pouting Grimace), Dan Weiss(Sixteen: Drummers Suite), and Jen Shyu(Song of Silver Geese), all on Pi, in addition to other significant releases including All Can Workfrom drummer John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble (a 2018 Grammy nominee) and Engage, upcoming from trumpeter Dave Douglas. Described by The New York Times as “unrelentingly inventive,” Webber’s own projects are clear expressions of her knotty compositional sense.