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Michael Nyman - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover: Soundtrack To The Film By Peter Greenaway (1989)

Posted By: Designol
Michael Nyman - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover: Soundtrack To The Film By Peter Greenaway (1989)

Michael Nyman - The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Soundtrack To The Film By Peter Greenaway

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 218 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 104 Mb
Label: Venture | # DBEBN 55(4) | Time: 00:40:24 | Scans included
Soundtrack, Score, Avant-Garde, Minimalism

For this, his seventh soundtrack for director Peter Greenaway, Nyman deftly orchestrates a mix of strings, horns, and voices to produce another of his fetching and romantic minimalist backdrops. The opening "Memorial" is the highlight of the lot and drives along with stuttering saxophones, an insistent string arrangement, elegiac brass solos, and the soaring vocals of soprano Sarah Leonard (Leonard would be featured on a large part of the Prospero's Books soundtrack). The piece was originally inspired by a 1985 Belgian soccer match tragedy, in which 39 Italian fans were killed. Nyman utilized a death march in his earlier Greenaway collaboration, Drowning by Numbers, and revives the scheme to great effect here for what would become the main theme of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Nyman contrasts the piece's climatic quality with two relatively sedate yet brooding numbers.

Luciano Berio - Sequenzas I-XIV for Solo Instruments (2006) 3 CDs

Posted By: Designol
Luciano Berio - Sequenzas I-XIV for Solo Instruments (2006) 3 CDs

Luciano Berio - Sequenzas I-XIV for Solo Instruments (2006) 3 CDs
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 634 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 420 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Naxos | # 8.557661-63 | Time: 03:01:53

Admirers of Luciano Berio's Sequenzas have long wished for an affordable, high-quality collection of these masterpieces for solo instruments, considered by some to be the core works in the composer's oeuvre. Deutsche Grammophon released Ensemble InterContemporain's fabulous set in 1994, but its relatively high price and incompleteness make it a second choice when compared with the 2006 set on Naxos, which is both reasonably priced and complete, now that Sequenza XIV for cello appears on CD for the first time. Of course, bargaining over cost and completeness is one thing, but artistic quality is another important consideration: how does the Naxos edition fare in its performances and sound quality? While Ensemble InterContemporain's terrific compilation practically guarantees accuracy and authenticity – many of Berio's original musicians were involved in the project – the performances on this triple-disc set are quite comparable and wholly convincing in virtuosic skills, lustrous timbres, and splendid recording quality; only an adept student of these pieces could note any discrepancies, and those would be minor.

Keeril Makan - In Sound (2008) with Kronos Quartet and Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band

Posted By: Designol
Keeril Makan - In Sound (2008) with Kronos Quartet and Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band

Keeril Makan - In Sound (2008)
with Kronos Quartet and Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band

EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 243 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 120 Mb
Label: Tzadik | # TZ8053 | Time: 00:48:11 | Scans included
Modern Creative, Avant-Garde, Experimental, Chamber Music

The strength of these pieces by American composer Keeril Makan is that they fall outside the boxes of minimalism, abstract electronic music, and world-influenced styles. The word visceral keeps coming up in his descriptions of his own music, which revels in sheer sound and proceeds in large, physical gestures with, Makan says blithely, "no formal logic other than careful attunement to what the ear and body dictate." Paradoxically, though, it's full of surprises. The three works on the album all fall loosely under the chamber music banner and are all recognizably by the same composer, but each has a different method.

Lard Free - Gilbert Artman's Lard Free Box Set (Complete Albums 1973-1977) (2008) 4CD Box Set, Japanese Remastered, Mini-LPs

Posted By: Designol
Lard Free - Gilbert Artman's Lard Free Box Set (Complete Albums 1973-1977) (2008) 4CD Box Set, Japanese Remastered, Mini-LPs

Lard Free - Gilbert Artman's Lard Free Box Set (Complete Albums 1973-1977) (2008)
4CD Box Set, Japanese Remastered, Mini-LP sleeve
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 820 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 357 Mb | Scans ~ 170 Mb
Label: Captain Trip Records | # CTCDB-610/613 | Time: 02:35:37
Progressive Rock, Avant-Garde, Experimental, Free Jazz, Jazz-Rock

With the possible exception of Richard Pinhas' Heldon, Gilbert Artman's Lard Free was probably the premier French progressive group of the '70s. The prolific Heldon might win in terms of amount of material, but the three near-perfect albums by Lard Free (despite the truly wretched band name) probably have them beat in terms of overall quality. Although Artman, a drummer who also dabbles in synthesizers and piano, called Lard Free a group, he was the only constant member; all three albums have different lineups. 1973's Lard Free consists of relatively short pieces with prominent piano and saxophone parts, and as such is the most jazz-oriented of the three. The following year's I'm Around About Midnight consists of three long pieces with much more synthesizer; at times, it sounds almost like early (pre-ambient) Tangerine Dream, or perhaps Clear Light, the French collective Artman and the then-current lineup of Lard Free occasionally worked with around this time. 1977's Lard Free III, also known as Spirale Malax, is Artman's best work, a pair of side-long experiments that combine space music, jazz, and King Crimson-style heavy progressive rock better than many groups (including King Crimson) could ever hope to manage.

Stephen Clarke, The JACK Quartet - Horaţiu Rădulescu: Piano Sonatas & String Quartets I (2016)

Posted By: Designol
Stephen Clarke, The JACK Quartet - Horaţiu Rădulescu: Piano Sonatas & String Quartets I (2016)

Stephen Clarke, The JACK Quartet - Horaţiu Rădulescu: Piano Sonatas & String Quartets I (2016)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 278 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 163 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Spectralism | Label: mode records | # mode 290 | Time: 01:01:41

The first volume in a series combining Radulescu’s complete Piano Sonatas and String Quartets, there are six of each, on Mode performed by the superb JACK Quartet and Stephen Clarke (piano). In the 1970s, Horatio Radulescu (1942-2008) began exploring and composing begun composing what he called “plasmatic music,” in which sound was conceived as an “endless ocean of vibrations,” as opposed to the traditional way in which music treats sound as a fabric of discrete scale steps. His music is linked to the “spectral music” school. Radulescu’s Fifth String Quartet is one of the key works in his output. It is in some ways the richest manifestation of the body of string techniques he had developed for his music. The Second Piano Sonata is inspired by the Tao of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (6-5 BC). The first movement, “Immanence,” opens with a powerful sonority built from spectral functions which gives a sense of immensity and strength. The Fifth Piano Sonata makes abundant use — more so than any of the other sonatas — of Romanian folk material, which is absorbed and integrated into Radulescu’s spectral language.

Alarm Will Sound & Ossia, Alan Pierson - Steve Reich: Tehillim, The Desert Music (2002)

Posted By: Designol
Alarm Will Sound & Ossia, Alan Pierson - Steve Reich: Tehillim, The Desert Music (2002)

Alarm Will Sound & Ossia, Alan Pierson - Steve Reich: Tehillim, The Desert Music (2002)
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 445 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 194 Mb | Scans included
Contemporary, Minimalism, Vocal | Label: Cantaloupe Music | # CA21009 | 01:14:44

Alarm Will Sound's recording of Steve Reich's monumental orchestral/choral works The Desert Music and Tehillim, released on the Cantaloupe label in 2002, greatly benefits from the group's close connections with the composer: the ensemble's conductor, Alan Pierson, and several of the performers studied at the Eastman School with Brad Lubman, a conductor frequently enlisted by Reich. Also, Pierson's arrangements, which reconcile the chamber and orchestral versions that exist for both works, were prepared in close consultation with the composer; thus, this may well be the definitive recording of these pieces. Brilliantly sonorous in their climaxes – the burst of light near the end of Desert Music, the "Alleluias" that close Tehillim – the players also articulate Reich's intricate canonic textures with nimble precision.

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Double Sextet & Radio Rewrite (2016)

Posted By: Designol
Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Double Sextet & Radio Rewrite (2016)

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Double Sextet & Radio Rewrite (2016)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 211 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 119 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Harmonia Mundi | # HMU 907671 | Time: 00:39:45

Following their internationally acclaimed recording of Steve Reich's masterpiece Music For 18 Musicians, Ensemble Signal and Brad Lubman present two recent pieces by the composer: Double Sextet from 2007 and Radio Rewrite from 2012. Double Sextet is scored for two sextets of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone and piano. It won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music - the first for the composer. Radio Rewrite is a work for instrumental ensemble inspired by two songs by the British rock band Radiohead - ''Jigsaw Falling into Place'' and ''Everything in Its Right Place.'' The piece represents the first time that Reich has reworked material from western pop/rock music. These strong, tuneful, energetic, tightly made works receive impassioned performances from Ensemble Signal, who The New York Times has called 'one of the most vital groups of its kind.'

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (2015)

Posted By: Designol
Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (2015)

Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman - Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (2015)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 309 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 171 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Harmonia Mundi | # HMU 907608 | 00:59:16

As more ensembles perform and record Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, its status as a minimalist masterpiece is increasingly affirmed. Ensemble Signal's 2015 release on Harmonia Mundi is one of several amazing performances that have matched Reich's original ECM New Series recording in technical brilliance and expressivity, and it has even earned the composer's approval for being, "…fast moving, spot on, and emotionally charged." Under the direction of Brad Lubman, Ensemble Signal maintains a relentlessly steady pulse and articulates the interlocking patterns with absolute precision, though the shifting tone colors are perhaps a little clearer in this performance than in other recordings. The microphone placement is not so close that individual instruments stand out, but there is enough separation of parts to allow some sense of direction and the orientation of the smaller sub-groups of pianos, xylophones, marimbas, strings, clarinets, and voices. This is a mesmerizing performance that will transfix listeners, and the music is so compelling that it will linger on well after the CD stops. Highly recommended.

Third Coast Percussion - Steve Reich: Mallet Quartet; Sextet; Nagoya Marimbas; Music for Pieces of Wood (2016)

Posted By: Designol
Third Coast Percussion - Steve Reich: Mallet Quartet; Sextet; Nagoya Marimbas; Music for Pieces of Wood (2016)

Third Coast Percussion - Steve Reich:
Mallet Quartet; Sextet; Nagoya Marimbas; Music for Pieces of Wood (2016)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 322 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 145 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Cedille | # CDR 90000 161 | Time: 01:02:27

GRAMMY WINNER, 59TH AWARDS: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. Third Coast Percussion has been saluted by the Washington Post for its virtuosity and precisely timed wit, and was called by the New York Times a commandingly elegant ensemble. The group, which is ensemble-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame, teaches and performs a concert series in Chicago, and has commissioned dozens of new works. This album is the ensembles Cedille label debut, and is an 80th birthday acknowledgement to American composer Steve Reich, the founding father of musical minimalism. This recording features four of Reichs most notable percussion works.

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes I-IX (2006) 9CD Box Set

Posted By: Designol
Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes I-IX (2006) 9CD Box Set

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes I-IX (2006) 9CD Box Set
Philip Glass - Michael Nyman - John Adams - Terry Riley - Arvo Pärt - John Cage
Friedrich Nietzsche - Erik Satie - Tom Johnson - Wim Mertens - Jacob ter Veldhuis
Yann Tiersen - Klaas de Vries - Simeon ten Holt - John Borstlap - Carlos Micháns

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 2 Gb | Scans ~ 63 Mb | Time: 10:15:53
Classical, Minimalism, Contemporary | Label: Brilliant Classics | # 8551

There's perhaps a touch of irony in the title of Dutch pianist and composer Jeroen van Veen's box set Minimal Piano Collection because at nine discs, it's a pretty massive collection. The program booklet notes that he recorded the entire set, which includes more than ten hours of music, in only six days, an astounding feat. In the program notes, van Veen offers a remarkably clear and concise history of minimalism in music. He defines it broadly enough (following the lead of composer and critic Tom Johnson) to include works by Friedrich Nietzsche and Satie. Philip Glass is the composer most widely represented, with three of the set's nine CDs devoted to his music originally for piano, as well as transcriptions from his film scores and operas. Two discs are given to van Veen's mammoth 24 Préludes, organized according to the framework of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Other composers range from the very well known, such as Michael Nyman, John Adams, Terry Riley, Arvo Pärt, and John Cage, to the familiar-to-specialists, like Tom Johnson, Wim Mertens, and Jacob ter Veldhuis, to those little-known to American audiences, like Klaas de Vries, Simeon ten Holt, John Borstlap, Yann Tiersen, and Carlos Micháns.

John Adams - Earbox: A Ten-CD Retrospective (1999) 10 CD Box Set

Posted By: Designol
John Adams - Earbox: A Ten-CD Retrospective (1999) 10 CD Box Set

John Adams - Earbox: A Ten-CD Retrospective (1999) 10 CD Box Set
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 2.98 Gb | Scans ~ 80 Mb | Time: 10:59:43
Classical, Contemporary, Minimilism | Label: Nonesuch | # 79453-2

On October 19, 1999, Nonesuch Records released The John Adams Earbox, a 10-CD box set retrospective, representing nearly all of John Adams’s recorded output for the label. The set includes all of the composer’s major works with which Adams has redefined contemporary classical music over the previous two decades. All recordings on The John Adams Earbox were supervised by the composer, and many were conducted or performed by Adams as well. All but four works on the Earbox were originally released on Nonesuch as first recordings. The John Adams Earbox includes examples from every phase of Adams’s career, from his earliest orchestral pieces such as Grand Pianola Music (1982), Harmonielehre (1985), and Harmonium (1980), to the widely hailed operas Nixon in China (1985-86) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1990-91), to works of this decade including Chamber Symphony (1992), Violin Concerto (1993), John’s Book of Alleged Dances (written for Kronos Quartet in 1994), Gnarly Buttons (1995) and the 1995 stagework I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw The Sky.

Gloria Cheng-Cochran - Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley (1998)

Posted By: Designol
Gloria Cheng-Cochran - Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley (1998)

Gloria Cheng-Cochran - Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley (1998)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 215 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 185 Mb | Scans included
Classical, Contenporary, Minimalism | Label: Telarc | # CD-80513 | Time: 01:08:09

This unique recording couples the music of two major 20th-century composers, and includes the world premiere on disc of Riley's "The Heaven Ladder, Book 7," commissioned by Cheng-Cochran and written in 1994. California-based pianist Gloria Cheng has become a favoured collaborator with some of the most demanding of today's composer/conductors, including Pierre Boulez, Essa-Pekka Salonen and Oliver Knussen, for her renditions of thorny 20th century scores. "The multifarious pulsings of Adams's Phrygian Gates (all 26 minutes of it) are more palatable here than on some rival versions, and the relatively brief China Gates (just five minutes) are well worth visiting. Terry Riley's pieces are more varied in colour and rhythm, less obviously 'minimalist', than you might have expected, with the worlds of jazz remaining well within earshot. Gloria Cheng-Cochran seems fully absorbed in the tasks to hand, and the sound is superb." (Gramophone Magazine).

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volume XXI-XXVIII (2017) 8CD Box Set

Posted By: Designol
Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volume XXI-XXVIII (2017) 8CD Box Set

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection, Volume XXI-XXVIII (2017) 8CD Box Set
Dennis Johnson - Philip Glass - Tom Johnson - Peter Garland
Terry Riley - Harold Budd - Le Monte Young

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 1.44 Gb | Scans included | Time: 09:46:40
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Brilliant Classics | # 95543BR

This 8CD set bring the listener back to the roots of Minimalism, all works were written in the seventies of the 20th century, a time when the new aesthetics and perception of music, sound, repetition and time experience were creating a new chapter in music history. The longest piece is the 5 hour “November” by Dennis Johnson, a work in which the player is free to build the intervals and chords according to his own timing and spacing. The other composers in this set are Philip Glass, Tom Johnson, Peter Garland, Terry Riley, Harold Budd and La Monte Young. Recorded in his own studio by the most important protagonist of Minimalism today, Dutch pianist Jeroen van Veen. Van Veen has a myriad of recordings to his name, notably the multi CD boxes Minimal Piano Collection 1 and 2, complete Satie, Einaudi, Tiersen, Jacob ter Veldhuis, Simeon ten Holt and many more.

Orchestre National de Lyon, David Robertson - Steve Reich: Different Trains, Triple Quartet, The Four Sections (2004)

Posted By: Designol
Orchestre National de Lyon, David Robertson - Steve Reich: Different Trains, Triple Quartet, The Four Sections (2004)

Steve Reich: Different Trains, Triple Quartet, The Four Sections (2004)
Orchestre National de Lyon, conducted by David Robertson

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 305 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 149 Mb | Scans ~ 42 Mb
Classical, Minimalism | Label: Naïve | # MO 782167 | Time: 01:05:01

There’s something special about this version of Different Trains. It’s the one commissioned by Wolfgang Sawallisch and David Robertson and their respective orchestras (Philadelphia and Lyon) in 2001 for string orchestra, and it impresses immediately by the richness of its vastly expanded sound palette. Though it may be heresy to say so, I never found the original string quartet version entirely convincing. This recording shows why: inside that frenetic chamber work was a much larger piece trying to get out, and here it is, fully realised, as it were, in glorious technicolor.

Alberto Rosado - Musica Ricercata: Gyorgy Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Toru Takemitsu, John Cage (2001)

Posted By: Designol
Alberto Rosado - Musica Ricercata: Gyorgy Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Toru Takemitsu, John Cage (2001)

Alberto Rosado - Musica Ricercata (2001)
works by György Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Toru Takemitsu, John Cage

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 261 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 219 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Verso | # VRS 2006 | Time: 01:17:06

Alberto Rosado showcases some of the most significant modern composers in this well-considered programme. Inevitably he’s up against fierce competition, not least Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recordings of both Ligeti’s Ricercata (included on the disc which received Gramophone’s Contemporary Award in 1997) and the complete Vingt Regards.