Classical Music Vinyl 320 Items

Transversales Disques proudly presents Alain Goraguer Rare Soundtracks & Lost Tapes. French composer Alain Goraguer who first made a name for himself as a sideman and arranger for Serge Gainsbourg wrote very few soundtracks, but amongst them, the legendary La Planète Sauvage (1973) is an absolute staple of France’s essential music. During that same period of time, Goraguer wrote two rare and beautiful scores using the same masterclass arrangements. On L’Affaire Dominici (1975), Alain Goraguer creates a theme of great melodic clarity from a palette of breathy flutes, clavinet D6 baroque textures, wah-wah guitars and slow-paced drums that clearly reminds La Planete Sauvage’s atmosphere. The same can be said about the score of Au delà de la peur (1975) with its descending clavinet melody, twanging bass riff, funky drums and flashes of bended electric guitars. This record also includes never before released tracks found in the vaults of French national radio: beautiful and timeless orchestral compositions recorded at Studio 105, Maison de la radio.

Albert Alan Owen was born in Wales in 1948 to parents of Welsh and Latvian heritage. His family later moved to Zimbabwe, where his father took up a teaching position. There, Owen was deeply influenced by local music and culture, while also exploring American RnB and jazz. It was during this period that he became acutely aware of the harsh inequalities under British colonial rule, which instilled in him a lifelong aversion to discrimination and racism.

In 1967, Owen returned to Europe to pursue his studies and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He went on to spend time in Paris, studying composition with the eminent Nadia Boulanger and piano under Jacques Février, a favorite pianist of Ravel’s and Poulenc’s. Owen's focus shifted almost entirely to composition, and the acquisition of a Fender Rhodes electric piano marked the beginning of a divorce from his classical Western training. This transition allowed him to merge his passion for African and African-American music with the impressionistic styles of Ravel and Debussy while exploring the innovative realm of electroacoustic composition. These formative experiences framed Owen’s career as a composer and educator at the Royal Academy of Music and London’s Working Men’s College. He eventually returned to Wales, where he continues to reside. In 1979, 29-year-old Albert Alan Owen released “Keyboards & Strings”, a light magical chamber music masterpiece. Transcending the formal conventions of its era, “Keyboard & Strings” is an acoustic and electric piano piece, where the violin is met by synths and electronics.

As is often the case in Albert Alan Owen’s most intimate works, there is a sense of ethereal beauty that emerges from the music, akin to the emotional state one might experience while contemplating a Félix Vallotton landscape or the unfathomable mystery of dawn’s first light. Quiet, profound, and immersive, “Keyboard & Strings” stands out as an electronic-age tone poem, a rare gem that transcends time and place.

180g

Explore the sonic landscapes of Trobollowitsch's latest vinyl release, where trumpet strains intertwine with resonant energies, able to fold, deform, and compress time and space so deftly that one has the impression of hearing echoes of distant worlds and times - 'everything everywhere all at once.'

ESP Institute artist Bartellow, one third of the project Tambien and otherwise known in the Contemporary Classical sphere as Beni Brachtel, returns to the label with his second full-length release, Noosphere. While currently heading the SVS label and residency series out of Munich, Beni’s resume expands well beyond electronic music to include immersive sound installations such as The Adven- ture Of The Empty House (solo live performance across seven floors of Walter Henn’s Deckelbau building), a slew of compositions for the Bavarian State Opera (for which he doubled as conductor), and a prolific career of over twenty-five theater scores for institutions such as the Münchner Kammerspiele, Schauspiel Basel, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Berliner Ensemble, Schauspiel Köln, Schaus- piel Graz and with directors Ersan Mondtag, Alexander Eisenach, Jessica Glause and Tobias Staab among others.

Noosphere is a compendium excerpting from theatrical scores WUT (Elfriede Jelinek, at Schauspielhaus Köln, directed by Ersan Mondtag, 2020), Ödipus and Antigone (Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin, directed by Ersan Mondtag, 2017), Der Zauberberg (Thomas Mann, Schauspiel Graz, directed by Alexander Eisenach, 2017), Hass Tryptichon (Sybille Berg, Wiener Festwochen / Maxim Gorki Theatre, directed by Ersan Mondtag, 2019), Wonderland Ave. (Sibylle Berg, Schauspielhaus Köln, directed by Ersan Mondtag, 2018), Die Verdammten (after Visconti ́s film, Schauspielhaus Köln, directed by Ersan Mondtag, 2019) and Roi Ubu (Alfred Jarry, Theater Neumarkt, Zurich, directed by Alexander Eisenach, 2018).

The work traverses homages, infusing everything from Baroque to Impressionism, and while these types of references are certainly built into the canon of Theatre as a discipline, here we gather histor- ic layers in an even wider net. Under the self-referential thumb of Contemporary Classical music, this sort of "hindsight" approach has been largely avoided, however, in today’s all-access arena, the constant stream of historic causal-chained events has opened a delta where anything is possible. This defines Bartellow’s stance among his colleagues as well as his cultural position as a composer.

Beni considers beauty a fleeting objective in the arts, that expression is often expected to follow notions of Destructivism or the unfulfilled. Art will pore over wounds, collective angst, mourn- ing a loss of natural habitat or a fear of technological invasion, yet there is a bitter irreverence for the friction or salvation in beauty itself. Acknowledging this subjectivity — what one audience considers superficial pleasure may be deeply profound to another — he leans into musical instinct as if composing via divine conduit.

Noosphere conjures a array of suspense, ecstasy, melancholy, and dread, but in isolating the work from its theatrical component, Brachtel directs our focus toward formal qualities, clearing unim- peded space to conceive fresh narratives and examine dynamism and interconnectivity. In sympathy with often difficult theatre pieces, the passages can be dark and transgressive, but more importantly they remain relative to Brachtel’s circumstances at their time of creation. The title Noosphere speaks to the evolution of human thought and knowledge, opening a door to subjective points-of-view. For example, Nexus II On The Beach refers to both Roberto Musci’s Water Messages On Desert Sand as well as the film Bladerunner, invoking the image of an android enjoying the sunset, but whether or not this abstraction may be considered beautiful depends the listener’s cumulative life experience and perspective.

This is hybrid chamber music, augmented by electro-acoustic layers, juxtaposing various periods and successively processing their residual themes into a trans-generational rendering of “now.”

Pianist and composer Bas Bulteel turns his gaze inward after a successful track record as leader of the adventurous energy bomb Wasdaman and as inspirer of his own trio, with which he won the 2014 Klara Music Prize for best CD in the jazz category for the album Coming Home, his debut as a bandleader.

Bas went into residency with visual artist Jan Frederik De Cock which resulted in a unique collaboration where image and sound dialogue with each other, feeding off each other, cursing against each other, loving each other ....

The result has become a profound and layered solo piano record that showcases Bas' versatility as a pianist and composer. Musically hovering between minimalism and avant-garde. Sometimes melancholic and always compelling.

Brendan Angelides, previously known as Eskmo and Welder, is an accomplished electronic music producer and composer on prestigious labels such as Interscope, Ninja Tune, Planet Mu, and Warp Records. Angelides latest venture, 'Oxygen' released under Ancestor label, represents a deeply personal and transformative artistic journey. Angelides presents his most personal work to date through his new album Oxygen, released on Ancestor. Becoming a father to twins in 2020, he channels the emotional dimensions of bringing new life into the world while processing his daughter’s diagnosis of cerebral palsy. ‘Stepping into parenthood for anyone is chaotic, and her condition felt like another foreign, unknown experience,’ he reflects. ‘Writing Oxygen out of that place was an embodiment of “life is messy” but distilling it into something that therapeutically felt right and that I want to share with people on the outside.’ With Oxygen, Angelides arrives at a vivid new horizon of his multi-genre output, intertwining his signature electronic palette with an array of orchestral incantations performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra. Across eleven compositions, expansive synth distortions meld with the lucent glow of instrumentation. Never shying away from heaviness musically, Angelides augments an explosive resurgence of identity as he transcends into a new chapter, presenting a release charged with his embrace of vulnerability and finding light in the darkness. credits

180g

“What a shadow in the instrument, and what a murmur, of the forests from whence issued its wood.” Rainer Maria Rilke

While reading the “Midnight Skin” script for the first time, Carla Pallone (Vacarme, Mansfield.TYA) in Nantes met Fanny in Athens. And the Eucalyptus trees. And it was at this same moment that she saw through her window, an Eucalyptus tree. Fact and fiction are already mixing, and Carla Pallone welcomes this sign with a smile. Then comes the meeting with filmmaker Manolis Mavris, and his work: first “Brutalia”, then “Midnight Skin”. The writing is chiseled and precise. Each frame is a painting. At the center of the film: Fanny's solitude which excludes her from humankind. This solitude requires a place for expression. Carla Pallone thus imagines an “organic” music, linked to the way that wood, strings and other materials live and resonate. A poetic and strange sound universe, close to Fanny, to her physical and psychological states. She has found the perfect junction between acoustic and electronic, highlighting a modern violin, out of the times. The result is a soundtrack similar to Fanny, inhabited, dark and moving. Human.

Somewhere between Mickaël Nyman and Mica Levi, Carla Pallone knows how to write atmospheres, create landscapes and draw lines of fiction. Her classical training and her taste for ancient music have nourished her path as a composer, to open the spectrum of her music to the widest possible audience. With a strong appreciation for the strings, she explores a sensitive sound universe, which unfolds between organic and analog materials. Acute sense of melody, neoclassicism, minimalism... repetitive pieces of music rub shoulders with ritornellos with great joy. And if the violin is king, synthesizers also find their proper place as disturbing basses or melodic sweeps. There is great sensivity in her sound research, at the crossroads of musical paths, from the most classical to the most experimental, improvised or meditative.

Jazz master Chick Corea’s unconventional vision of a classical performance shines through in his interaction with the Orchestra da Camera Della Sardegna, turning the acclaimed chamber orchestra into a large-scale jazz ensemble. His unorthodox approach adds a touch of playfulness to the Mozart & Gershwin pieces performed while upholding Corea’s obvious reverence for their music. His joyous fusion sets the tone for the musicians and the audience, creating a truly captivating and boundary- pushing experience.

The recording captures the essence of Corea’s musical vision, his appreciation for classical traditions, and his undeniable genius as a performer and improviser. It stands as a testament to his lasting influence and his eternal quest to push the boundaries of music.

Through his work as a composer and a performer, he sought to bridge the gap between genres, embracing the universality and enduring power of classical music. Corea realized this ambition fully during this live performance as was eager to release the recording as an album that would inspire jazz and classical music lovers equally.