Classical Music 294 Items

Volker Bertelmann and Hildur Guðnadóttir hardly need an introduction - their distinct styles have graced the speakers of pretty much anyone enamored with experimental music in the last decade, and between them the two have chalked up an enviable canon of successes. Bertelmann, under the Hauschka moniker has explored the extremities of prepared piano improvisation, and Guðnadóttir has taken cinematic, explorative cello music into a new era of depth and passion, so to hear them both together is a rare and unexpected treat. Rare is putting it lightly even - „Pan Tone“ is a recording of a single concert which the duo performed on the 26th of February 2010 as part of Arctic Circle - Bubbly Blue and Green festival at Kings Place in London, and documents an event that would truly never be repeated. Sure, they could attempt to re-create the event, but the spontaneity and glorious serendipity in this particular recording is a pleasure to behold.

Bertelmann and Guðnadóttir decided to create a set of compositions which based on the idea of the ocean, and took a book of Pantones to extract exact references to the specific colors of the sea. These watery tones form the backbone of the performance and inform the direction of the collaboration, guiding us through rich blues, glassy greens and frothy whites. In listening to the music it seems incredibly appropriate that the artists should choose blue as the middle ground in their work; the ineffable lightness that Bertelmann brings to the table is a stark contrast to Guðnadóttir´s sinking darkness, and as the two styles collide we witness a plethora of tones, shades and hues. It sounds as if the two artists have been playing together for decades, and their sound is so perfectly matched you might wonder why it´s taken them this long to collaborate. All that´s left for us to do is to soak in the tidal beauty of this very exclusive body of music, to listen to it sing, bubble and crash through its duration before settling in total silence. When the record reaches its conclusion there is an unsettling calm, a sense that you have witnessed something very special indeed, and that is a feeling to prize amongst all else.

Unique Direct-To-Disc Recordings

Wonderful set of Old-school tinged House tunes, a dedication to Theo, Larry, Chez and all the legendary deep House cats.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

❝ 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.

Compilation of our favorite Arvo Pärt pieces. All sparse and beautiful arrangements. Some solo piano pieces, some duets with piano, violin cello and viola and one string quartet. The pieces on this record are all unique to the style of Arvo Pärt - deceptively simple compositions that force you to live in the moment you are listening to them. A Pärt quote from the back of the record - "You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big. And you are free -- you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary." This record comes in a beautiful "tip on" old school cover with metallic gold foil and features an incredible painting from the 16th century manuscript Kometenbuch.