Classical Music 247 Items

“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.

Renowned for her percussion genius, Limpe Fuchs surprises with a rare venture into her classical roots - the piano. Despite her extensive musical career, documented piano performances have been scarce until now. In this album she transcends time and expectation, diving into the instrument's essence. Her rhythmic finesse as a percussionist leaves an indelible mark on each keystroke. Join Fuchs on this intriguing late venture into the world of piano and savour every note on this unique and raw artistic encounter.

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.”

“Shotns - Shadows: Songs from Testimonies, Volume 3” - is the latest addition (2024) to the Fortunoff Video Archive’s Songs from Testimonies project., brought by the Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble featuring Sasha Lurje. The project brings to life painful memories of surviving the genocide, and memory of those who did not make it, but first and foremost these are the stories of these people’s lives. Volume 3 stays as linguistically and musically diverse as the previous two albums. Songs in Greek, Ladino, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Czech; music from concentration camps and ghettos of Vilna, Warsaw, and Lodz; music of cabaret and theatre from across the globe— adapted to tell the stories of suffering and betrayal, hope and loss.

Close to VG+. Cover is missing.

Limited edition repress

CD comes in a soft case, instead of the original crystal case. All booklets included.

Lubomyr Melnyk returns with a 24-minute mini album entitled 'Evertina' on December 15, 2014. Featuring three newly composed solo piano pieces, the long-form EP showcases another side to Lubomyr – his more gentle and melodic work.

180g vinyl.