Description
Sir Harrison Birtwistle singles out Pierre Boulez's 1950s cycle for voice and mixed ensemble, and describes encountering the score for the first time, while Paul Griffiths explains how the composer employed total serialism and a radical new approach to instrumentation in illuminating the fleeting, surrealist poetry of Rene Char.
Conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen celebrates the music of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski and his landmark work from the early 1960s, Jeux Venitiens. Writer Paul Griffiths explains how the composer used chance within the score to create rhythmic complexity; and we hear from...
Published 11/25/12
Composer Matthew Shlomowitz makes the case for Austrian composer Bernhard Lang’s Differenz/Wiederholung 2, a setting of texts by Gilles Deleuze, William Burroughs and Christian Loidl. Commentator Graham McKenzie highlights the jagged soundworld of this music, and the composer’s use of repetition.
Published 11/18/12
Author and journalist Rob Young nominates French composer Eliane Radigue's Songs of Milarepa, which combines drone-like electronics with the voices of Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Robert Ashley singing and reading the words of the 11th-century Tibetan Buddhist poet Jetsun Milarepa. With commentary...
Published 11/11/12