On this CD, the towering figure of Luciano Berio (1925-2003) is the subject of a warm tribute by the Ex Novo Ensemble from Venice. Surely this posthumous recording of Berio is one of the finest music-making by Ex Novo, featuring two of Berio’s landmark Sequenzas superbly played by Franco Donatoni, Emanuele Casale and Claudio Ambrosini. Moreover, the Berio bits, his Sequenzas for solo flute and solo piano, are intriguing to say the least. Rarely will you hear the flute flutter so beautifully in such a playful display of virtuosity. As for the piano Sequenza, Orvieto’s mastery of his instrument is simply stunning.

The Light and Itaipu originated as Glass's response both to nature and to a modern technological wonder. Noting in an interview that his music has always been strongly programmatic and that program music arose as a response to nature, Glass subsequently embarked on an analogous series of symphonically conceived "portraits of nature" similar to his "portrait operas" (Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, concerned with the life of Mahatma Gandhi, and Akhnaten). The result is a vivid portrait of musical evocations that merge and metamorphose as the music sweeps toward its destination, often reinforced and contrasted in unexpected ways, by summoning up a body of thoughts, mental pictures, and attitudes.

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"What can a flame remember? If it remembers a little less than is necessary, it goes out; if it remembers a little more than necessary, it goes out. If only it could teach us, while it burns, to remember correctly." —Giorgos Seferis

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Tamia is no Dame Meredith Monk but, if I remember correctly, her vocal prowess is no less impressive in its own right. Like Monk, Tamia sings in an unknown tongue that appeals directly to the deep recesses of our psyche, inviting us into the unknown, the uncodified, and the unexplored.

Dubbed as as “a film for the ears”, Book of Days (1984), which has been shown in the New York Film Festival and was subsequently aired on PBS, is a 74-minute film created and directed by Meredith Monk. The film draws parallels between the Middle Ages and the present day by presenting the visions of a 14th century Jewish girl who sees airplanes, cars, New York streets, and possibly everything in between.

As a former pupil of Elliott Carter, David Schiff’s lucid opera, Gimpel the Fool, is based on one of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s best known stories. It tells of a good man deceived by his wife who yet, in the end (well, after the end, as she is already dead when the opera begins), can forgive her infidelities. Indeed, Schiff´s notes tell us that it was the story’s very Judaic character that attracted him in the first place. Schiff’s “klezmer” tunes include saxophone, keyboards, mandolin and accordion against the backdrop of Yiddish themes that predominate among sly Stravinskyesque touches that make their unexpected cameo appearances.

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This celebratory 2-disc special edition features Cage's most visionary masterpiece, Sonatas and Interludes performed by pianist Aleck Karis, as well as a free-bonus-disc that brings us to an intimate California living room, where Cage converses and gives a reading of his poem-cum-manifesto, Composition in Retrospect. While John Cage never wrote anything you'd call Classical Top 40, his music up to 1950 is far more accessible than the random and chance-influenced pieces he created later on. These mysterious, wispy pieces sound as though they were written for a small ensemble of ghostly percussion instruments, although they are played by a single performer playing a piano with various gadgets attached to the strings. You need the clear sound of this recent digital recording to appreciate the music, and Karis keeps everything moving without overstressing the rhythms. —Amazon.com

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Unquestionably one of the choral masterpieces of the 20th century, Alfred Schnittke's Concerto for Mixed Chorus is the summation of Schnittke's style of "new simplicity". Written in the mid 1980s, it is an extended setting of words from "The Book of Lamentations" by the Armenian monk Grigor Narekatsi (951-1003). At 40 minutes, the Concerto is a challenging work for any chorus, but what so impresses both in the music and the performance here is its deceptive, organic simplicity. There's a wonderfully controlled ebb and flow to the phrasing and dynamics that belies the work's complexities.

With contributions to the world of music which extend far beyond his principal instrument, Heinz Holliger is one of this century's truly outstanding musicians. A noted conductor and composer as well as an outstanding oboist, he is devoted to preserving the classic repertoire while at the same time promoting works by living composers and other repertoire of the 20th century.

Born in Buenos Aires and living in Europe since 1957, Mauricio Kagel became Professor of New Music Theatre in Cologne in 1974 and has often found himself in alliance with other avant-garde composers such as Stockhausen, Ligeti and Boulez. I find Kagel's music, however strangely absorbing and moving it may be, relatively well represented on this CD. Far removed from the theatrical high jinx for which Kagel remains best known, Zwei Akte is a collection of six short jazz pieces that, in turn, come from a mixture of 41 pieces which all begin with the letter R, together comprising a Radiophantasie 'Rrrrrrr…'.