Classical Music Vinyl 345 Items

"How to begin? No beginning... never ending reverberation," Antoine Beuger writes in the accompanying notes to Leo Svirsky's River Without Banks. Dedicated to his first piano teacher Irena Orlov, River Without Banks is a mesmerizing, emotional collection of pieces that are simultaneously complex and fluid. The title River Without Banks comes from a chapter of musicologist Genrikh "Henry" Orlov's profound work Tree of Music. In said chapter, Orlov traces the history of sacred music from the Western and Eastern tradition and how the forms (of the chant, raga etc.) sought to eliminate the division between the physical and the spiritual - the bank and the river.

Arranged for two pianos with accompaniment from strings, trumpet, and electronics, this is Svirsky's deepest dive yet into the instability of listening and its transformation of musical semantics and affect. Like Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, Svirsky overlays romantic musical gestures to create a lush unfamiliarity. No sooner than each track begins the next moment unfurls beneath it, cascading time and blurring perception of past and present. River Without Banks is less an album of songs than songs of a singular, unlocatable album. Performed by the composer with assistance from Britton Powell, Max Eilbacher, Leila Bordreuil, Tim Byrnes, and recorded by Al Carlson.

Meet the intoxicating, meditative sounds of Claude Debussy (1862-1918), one of the greatest innovators of Western music. The impressionist composer was inspired by the classical myth of the sirens, female sea-demons with such unearthly beautiful voices that they managed to lure all passing sailors into their deadly arms. In a similar way, Debussy wanted to enchant his listeners with his esoteric composition Trois nocturnes, inspired by the atmosphere of the night. In the first part, Nuages, one can hear silvery-lit clouds slide slowly past the moon. The second part, Fetes, depicts nocturnal festivities and blazing torches, and the third part is devoted to the mysteriously singing Sirens. Unlike his contemporaries, Debussy did not compose elaborate, bombastic symphonies, but rather dreamy, self-contained music that is still topical today, and breaths the free spirit of nature. It 'would resound through the open spaces and float joyfully over the tops of the trees.' The lucid performance of the Orchestre National De Lyon comes close to Debussy's ideal, and seduces the listener to lose himself in otherworldly dreams and mind-expanding fantasies. This beautiful recording of Nocturnes never been on vinyl before!! *Pre-order price*

There is no such thing as confused programming! Relentless, grungy dark Acid with an industrial feel at a reasonable pace by I-F as Jungian Archetype!

Charlemagne Palestine's majestic 1976 work The Golden Mean, originally performed by Palestine on two pianos, is revisited here as The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn, a new collaboration between Palestine and enigmatic musician Rrose.
March 2018: the Festival Variations in Nantes commissions Charlemagne Palestine to reinvent The Golden Mean for two pianists. Palestine chose Rrose to join him in this new rendition of the work. Together, they performed The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn onstage at the main opera house in Nantes -- the sumptuous Théâtre Graslin – with extraordinary results.
The concept of the 'golden mean' goes back to the roots of mathematics, and ancient Greek philosophy. It is an important work in the Palestine mythos, embodying his total immersion in the power of the interval. "It's probably his most systematic work . . . a step-by-step journey through the intervals of the octave," says Rrose. "When we rehearsed it, we were noticing how each interval is like a universe of its own -- with its own history, emotions, and sonic qualities all mixed up together. Every time you move from one interval to the next, it feels like moving into another world.
I love the interval," Palestine told me in a recent interview. "I love when it plays with itself. That's what I learned from organ musics too. You can just do an interval, and if they're just slightly out of tune with each other, then they shimmer . . . they play themselves. And it sounds like somebody's playing lots of notes. In your ear, it's like an aural phenomenon . . . that's my whole concept. I make something that then does itself somehow. It continues by itself. So I don't have to always be there. And that makes my music a little less egocentric. So there's more space. Also for the listener — the ear plays with these things, and you're not always being given orders. Your ear isn't given orders all the time of what to listen for."
Beautifully recorded, with mastering by Rashad Becker of Dubplates and Mastering, The Golden Mean + Sheeenn feels expansive, radiant and hypnotic, opening new ears to its enduring mystery.
Rrose adds this note to listeners: "Do not focus your attention on the notes being played, but on the ocean of overtones swimming, suspended, overhead, brushing against one another, kissing one another, melting into one another.

Matthew Herbert releases a new big band album - The State Between Us. The double album is released on the day the U.K. is scheduled to leave the European Union. Made in collaboration with over a thousand musicians and singers from across the EU, The State Between Us began as a project responding to the triggering of Article 50 and the dramatic shift in the national story that began in June 2016. Over the course of the next two years - against the backdrop of a relentlessly challenging news cycle and via large-scale recording sessions abroad - something unexpected emerged.

The State Between Us is an album that contemplates what it means to be British in 2019. Its sixteen tracks reflect a journey on foot across Great Britain (and beyond) imagined in beautifully elegiac melodies carefully woven with site-specific recordings. World War II planes in flight rub against a Ford Fiesta being broken down into its component parts; the loneliness of a cross-channel swimmer follows a single cyclist riding around Chequers. Here, the evocative sounds of empty harbours, and factories being demolished, of ancient trees and the calls of soon to be extinct animals ebb and flow through music that poses one hugely significant question - Where’s Home? - and leaves the listener with one resoundingly hopeful answer: You’re Welcome Here.

Whilst the record is a giant collaboration, there are a number of notable special guests including singers Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne, Arto Lindsay, Merz, Patrick Clarke and highly respected solo instrumentalists Enrico Rava, Byron Wallen, Sheila Maurice Gray and Nathaniel Cross. Lyrics include words by Britain’s greatest living playwright Caryl Churchill, Percy Shelley, John Donne and various abusive members of the public and the secretary general of UKIP. Artwork by longtime collaborator Sarah Hopper for The State Between Us is based on an image taken by renowned photographer Eva Vermandel.

Quirine Viersen returns to the cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach.
She decided she wants to share with you the development she has gone
through after deep inner work. Just as the cello suites were a new journey
for Bach, they signify now the same for her. “Bach gave me, time and again,
life energy. Through his purity he brought me back to my own purity and
closer to the answer on my questions.” Due to the enormous development
in length and size of the structure, Viersen suspects that they have been
an experiment for Bach himself, possibly even study material. “The further
you get into the suites, the larger the intervals and bigger the technical
challenges. It demonstrates that Bach was becoming more and more aware
of the enormous possibilities.
Being awarded the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award, Quirine performed
with the Vienna Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta at the Lucerne Festival
in 2000. Since then, Quirine has played the cello concerto repertoire
with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt, Ingo
Metzmacher and Bernard Haitink, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra/
Valery Gergiev, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra/Jean Fournet and
many others. After working and recording extensively with Silke Avenhaus
for almost twenty years, Quirine has sought out new duo collaborations.
Recitals with pianist Enrico Pace kicked off with great success at the
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam in 2017.
Bach Cello Suites is available as a limited edition of 500 individually
numbered copies on black vinyl.

❝ J'aime écrire de la musique de chambre et des chorales, et particulièrement de la musique pour orchestres. Mais il n'est pas toujours simple de voir ces dernières jouées, l'orgue devient alors le meilleur moyen de donner au compositeur de vastes ressources ❞, écrivait Moondog en 1978 pour accompagner l’album Selected Works – confidentiel cousin américain de Moondog in Europe le premier disque enregistré en Allemagne.

Avec New Sound l’Ensemble Minisym fait le chemin inverse, emportant les pièces pour orgue(s) qui constituent l’album A New Sound of an Old Instrument (1979) – ainsi que des pièces composées en Europe durant cette même période – vers une instrumentation nouvelle et singulière. Le travail de l’Ensemble se base alors sur une grande connaissance de l’univers de Moondog qui a lui-même – et tout au long de sa vie – régulièrement donné de nouvelles couleurs à de mêmes compositions en changeant leurs instrumentations. Ce qui est d’ailleurs particulièrement manifeste au sein de l’album A New Sound of an Old Instrument dont la première face est constituée de pièces essentiellement composées aux milieu du tumulte des rues de New-York et marquée par une incroyable science du métissage (« Oasis », « Single Foot ») quand la seconde fait la part belle à de nouvelles compositions inspirées par ce sol européen que Moondog foule depuis peu et de manière désormais définitive (« Barn Dance », « Elf Dance », « Log in B »).
Empruntant des chemins de traverses les musiciens de Minisym déchiffrent par ailleurs des pièces jusque là inédites, parfois jamais jouées ni-même enregistrées par Moondog (« Logrundr in a », « Ground in d minor », « Marche Funèbre (Vercingétorix) », « Shneeflocken »).
Loin des académismes, c’est un monde que l’on rencontre ici, à l’ombre des instruments aussi rares que chers à Moondog. Ce disque, fruit d’un travail au long cours permet un souffle aussi fidèle qu’iconoclaste sur la musique d'un compositeur qui a passé sa vie entière à échafauder une oeuvre d'une naïveté toute particulière.

Limited edition for Record Store Day 2018!

Henrik Schwarz and !K7 are proud to announce a collaboration that will bare many different musical fruits. The first of these is a brand new label called Between Buttons, curated by Henrik and focused on acoustic sounds and contemporary compositions. Between Buttons will be in partnership with !K7’s own neo-classical hub 7K!, and will kick off with a new mini LP by Schwarz entitled Works Piano, followed by an EP entitled Aphorisms by Syrian artists Khaled Kurbeh & Raman Khalaf Ensemble. Mixing up old and new technologies, experimental and more classical approaches, the label will see Schwarz forge new paths in his own work, as well as curating material from the peers he has worked with over the last 15 years. Mainly made up of acoustic sounds, piano, string quartets, self-built instruments, percussion and intriguing classicist elements with a modern twist, there will be EPs from piano virtuoso Bugge Wesseltoft, as well as other electronic producers wanting to show themselves in a different, more 'unplugged' light. “In these times of constant turbo mode, likes and thumbs-up, we need to go back to basics,” says Henrik. “We want to move away from the idea that relentless hasty productivity is a must, and instead take time to create space, to let ideas mature and to focus the mind on subtler sounds.”
Works Piano will be a four track mini album that uses a Yamaha Disklavier as the starting point and reimagines it, reworks it and alters it with various digital and recording technologies. One track is a created with a reactive algorithm and one is composed purely from altered and processed piano sounds.

Celibidache never conducted opera (perhaps a single Carmen, or maybe an act of Don Giovanni…) because, he said, opera performance is subject to too many approximations. Celibidache was the great conductor of Symphonies and Concertos and here, in this recital, his performance is the best. Featuring a sublime rendition of Shubert's "Unfinished", this is a magical recording with great sound.

“Prehension ” is the new album of composer and pianist Joep Beving.

Beving has been one with the piano from an early age. He was forced to end his musical studies at the conservatory and instead continued at university to get a degree in social sciences. However, his love for his instrument never perished.

Where once his goal was to hit as many notes per minute as physically possible, his style of playing has changed over the years, searching for a particular aesthetic essence. His path was illuminated by a piano that Beving inherited from his grandmother when she passed away in 2009. This German instrument insisted on a more gentle touch and a gracious pace, which eventually led Beving to adapt to a more classical vocabulary to tell his story.

Joep Beving is a composer and musician, but to the international advertising community he is mostly known as the face of music agency MassiveMusic.

“Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works” is the new album by Max Richter. The album is based on the Woolf Works compositions, originally created for the London Royal Ballet production of choreographer Wayne McGregor. This was production was inspired by the work and life of Virginia Woolf.

Max Richter (1966) is a German-born British composer who has been an influential voice in post-minimalist composition and in the meeting of contemporary classical and alternative popular musical styles since the early 2000s. Richter is classically trained, having graduated in composition from the Royal Academy of Music and studied with Luciano Berio in Italy.

Richter is well known for his prolific output: composing and recording his own music; writing for stage, opera, ballet and screen; producing and collaborating on the records of others; and collaborating with performance, installation and media artists. He has recorded seven solo albums and his music is widely used in cinema.

The crossover between electronic music and classical composition has never been in more vibrant and dynamic health. Multifarious musician Emika explores this fertile ground on her ambitious new opus 'Melanfonie': her first orchestral composition, some four years in the making.
Funded by a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign that exceeded its target by an impressive €25,000.
While many rebel from their classical training never to return to it explicitly, Emika has always been attracted to the potential and freedoms offered by the symphony form. As well as taking inspiration from her electronic music background in composing the music itself, Emika also applied some of production and playback principles from that realm to create a piece whose every element has been carefully considered.
Emika is on a quest to try and change what we mean when we talk about ‘classical music’. For her, the magic of the ‘genre’ is about the instruments themselves and more importantly the people who play them; not the restricting traditions and conventions of the classical world itself. I want to change the face of classical music and give it a more honest and real image. It is time we had something other than pomp and circumstance and avant-garde squeaks and pops.”

Composer and Golden Globe winning Jóhann Jóhannsson releases his first album for Deutsche Grammophon Recordings. It feels like a meditation over beauty and creativity Jóhannsson is a role model for the growing scene of contemporary composers who draw their inspiration from soundtracks, Minimalism, Ambient und electronic music. “Orphée describes the way out from the dark into the light inspired by mythical variations from Ovid to Cocteau. It’s the story of death and reincarnation as a metaphor for our society. Again Jóhannsson mixes acoustic elements combined with electronics, mysterious soundscapes paired with orchestral and a capella voices.

Unreleased Neo Classic tracks by Max Richter. Hauschka, Johann Johannsson, Dustin O’Halloran, Sylvain Chauveau, etc. on Fat Cat's sub label 130701.