How do Scelsi's works for solo piano and piano chamber works fit into his ouvre? Most of his numerous piano compositions were written in two batches, from 1930 to 1943 and from 1952 to 1956 (if one wants to trust the dates of composition given by Scelsi, who intended to fool musicologists). […] When after more then a decade-long psychic crisis, Scelsi resumed composing for the piano, he fell back upon techniques he had used in his early works, namely motivic organization contrasted by somewhat amorphous pitch or sound centers. Yet, more and more of these pieces focus on the repetition of single pitches. They also reveal meditative aspects which are emphasized by such Sanskrit-derived subtitles as Bot-ba - An evocation of Tibet with its monasteries in the high mountains: Tibetan rituals, prayers and dances, (Suite No. 8, 1952), Ttai (Suite No. 9), or Ka (Suite No. 10).

“The three quartets provide a commentary on each other and the time in which they were composed. Gran Torso has something of an investigation about it, of a broaching, of forays into critical new land. Reigen designates the sounds and techniques of two very different regions. Grido gains a new expressiveness– the land of music is freely praised and celebrated, although never without reflexive refraction or arousing disturbance. In the Choral at the end comes a sharp crack, a bark, before the music collapses.”

Martin Kaltenecker

“To write music for Dante’s entire Commedia… It was not without trepidation that I accepted the proposal for a television production. Especially to accompany a reading of the text, meaning to follow it step by step, but also to support it with solid architecture. It is the opposite of a background created fragmentarily with the situations to which it relates. [Rather] a complete structure that expresses itself within the poem, a unified plan. I thought of a single arch of music, of gigantic and yet perfect proportions.

"…a large cycle, comprised of seven works, which are performed without interruption – as one large text. For me in this work, there is a certain analogy with Bach's cycle "The Art of the Fugue"; in Bach's work the didactic idea and its application are primary. I could have called this cycle "The Art of the Melody", but in this name the didactic idea is missing and only the "art" is represented; thus "fleeting melodies" – the expanse, in which melodies exist on the boundary between their appearance and disappearance…"

Valentin Silvestrov

This collection of Krysztof Penderecki's music encompasses one of New Music's most intense, even extreme pieces: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Played in the extreme registers by 52 string performers, this piece came off in every way as a careening lamentation. Decrying the bombing of Hiroshima at a time when it was still a historical blue ribbon on the war chest of the U.S., Threnody was unforgettable for its vast ranges of sound colors, from the quietest and most brittle to the most raging, swirling bruises imaginable.

–Andrew Bartlett

Reflections, aphorisms, exercises in style, work notes, harmonic experiments, tone explorations. The Preludi of Giacinto Scelsi are all these, a full-length fervid carnet of notes which accompanied the composer for almost twenty years. Pages which reveal to us, through the sonority of the piano, a period of his creative activity still little known or explored.

Holy Ghost is the first comprehensive attempt to build a monument in sound to Albert Ayler. The settings – radio and TV sessions, studio demos, private recordings, live concert footage – find his music at its most liberated. And with the sponsorship and assistance of Ayler's family, friends, and colleagues, Holy Ghost documents his never-before-heard first and last recordings, bookending rare and unissued music from every stage of his career.

revenantrecords.com

Klavierstück XII and Klavierstück XIII (and their versions as scenes from the operas Donnerstag aus Licht and Samstag aus Licht) were written for his daughter Majella, and were first performed by her at the ages of 16 and 20, respectively. The saxophone duet in the second act of Donnerstag aus Licht, and a number of synthesizer parts in the Licht operas, including Klavierstück XV ("Synthi-Fou") from Dienstag, were composed for his son Simon, who also assisted his father in the production of the electronic music from Freitag aus Licht.

For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. With the Drei Geistliche Volkslieder (1925) he used Schoenberg's twelve tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1927) was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form.

Unlike many more formally-inclined composers, Ferneyhough often speaks of his music as being about creating energy and excitement rather than embodying an abstract schema. His pieces rarely use 12-note rows, but do include microtones and frequent use of glissando.
His scores make huge technical demands on performers; sometimes creating parts that are so detailed they are likely impossible to realize completely.

The Danish composer Poul Ruders is one of the most distinctive voices in European music today. The style is extrovert and international, direct in its appeal and the inventiveness if the music is astonishing and full of passion. Apart from some orchestration lessons he is basically self-taught. The Solar Trilogy composed 1992 to 1995, is a huge symphonic triptych, depicting in music the life and behaviour of our nearest star: the Sun.

dacapo-records.dk