AvaxHome Music Community Requests for Music

“

Wolff first met Cage in New York in 1950 when at the age of sixteen he began to study composition with him. Wolff later described some of the things he learnt from Cage: "That musical structures are most usefully and clearly made in terms of time (rhythmic structures). That musical continuity need not follow along single, homogenous categories ... That by making indeterminacy integral to the process of composing and (or) performing there can be brought about unpredictable successions, combinations, superpositions and overlaps which may surprise you, innocently and impersonally. That your work is not finished until performed, that it cannot but exist socially." Already, even before he met Cage, Wolff was asking some fairly fundamental questions: "What sort of sounds do you use?", "Why should this sound follow that sound?", "How do you structure this?", i.e. questions of compositional choice, procedure and continuity. His experience up to then had been in classical music, which he had studied from an early age; he was discovering Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartok, Varese; he wanted to make a fresh start, to take nothing for granted. Someone gave him copies of Cowell's New Music magazine, virtually a compendium of American experimental music since the 1930s. He was looking for alternative models, "anything to suggest you could work in a different way". The meeting with Cage came at an opportune moment, when Cage had reached a critical point in his work: "I was with Cage when he finally decided that chance was the way to do it". - Michael Parsons, album booklet

”

“

Looking at Petrassi's total oeuvre, there are certainly decisive masterpieces to be found among his vocal and chamber music. However, the Concerti for orchestra, composed during a period ranging almost forty years, from 1934 to 1972, is the only group of pieces that complete reflects his artistic quest that passed through a myriad of experiences, providing material for the study of developments in the Italian and European music of the era, seen, naturally, from the personal viewpoint of Petrassi's poetics. from the CD booklet

”

Per Norgard's music has much in common with that of Charles Ives: multiple planes of rhythmic activity commingle and produce a sensation of controlled chaos. Though we are assured that a strong structural principle is at work, there's no point in trying to discern it even on repeated listening. This is music with a strong tactile presence that makes its best impression when viewed as a stream-of-consciousness experience. On that basis, there's much to enjoy here even if the almost bewildering variety of sounds and musical shapes on offer will not be to all tastes.

“

Composer, pianist, orchestral director, essayist, organiser, Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) was a unique presence In the whole history of Italian music, to which the figure of what the French would call the homme-orchestre (as for Pierre Boulez, for example), has always been extraneous. Apart from himself, it was only Bruno Maderna, literary activity notwithstanding, who could move with so much artistic tension and plurality in his commitment: for both of these to write, to perform one's own music or that of others (for Casella in the double garb of pianist and conductor), to organise public events, to promote festivals, was part of a precise project. from the CD booklet

”

Per Nørgård (b. 1932) is the most important figure in Danish music since Carl Nielsen. The harp plays a major role in Nørgård’s music, and appears in over 40 of his works. But it rarely sounds like the harp we know from Romantic ballet music. Per Nørgård is fascinated by the simplicity and primality of the instrument. With Through Thorns (2003) as the pivotal work this CD offers a collection of Nørgård’s most beautiful works for harp solo as well as other works that demonstrate the composer’s constant fascination with the instrument.

During a lull in the Roxy Music circus troupe's lengthy 70s run, guitarist Phil Manzanera took the unusual step of revisiting an old previously un-recorded group. Reconstituting Quiet Sun with a line-up that included keyboardist Dave Jarrett, bassist Bill MacCormick and drummer Charles Hayward, he scored a most unlikely triumph (well in a musical sense, not a commercial one!). Quiet Sun's only album is as far away from Roxy Music's standard fare as you can get, being a more overtly progressive set of barn-storming jazz-rock that is not dissimilar to the efforts of say Hatfield And The North. In fact, this ironically titled album is nothing short of a lost Canterbury classic. I think this album is much better than any single album Manzanera cut with Roxy Music. If anything, despite belonging firmly in the Canterbury camp, Mainstream is a little more spacey and a little more symphonic, than yer "average" Canterbury masterpiece. A real treat awaits you here, folks!

“

Although his works have repeatedly aroused controversy, Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) was one of the most influential and innovative figures in Italian music throughout the period from the First World War to the Second. The five compositions here recorded date from various different stages in his highly active career. from the CD booklet

”

“

In the early 1990s, she moved to Germany. By this time, after years of obscurity, her international career had taken off and she was being deluged with requests for music by soloists and concert-giving organisations from all over the world. Nowadays she lives in the countryside outside Hamburg, composing with the utmost intensity and, as far as possible, avoiding disturbance and the telephone. from the CD booklet

”