Colin Currie plays Xenakis, Nørgård, Stockhausen and more (recorded live, Friday 17 July 2020)

Solo percussion from Scottish performer Colin Currie, previously featured on this blog in one of his earliest recordings.  This recital, performed in an empty hall in Glasgow with the stage strewn with instruments (and kitchen utensils), was broadcast live as one of Radio 3's Lunchtime Concerts, and takes in seven composers in a breathtaking hour.

There's the sonically powerful material that you might expect from a solo percussion showcase, not least in the closing Rebonds B by Iannis Xenakis and in Kevin Volans' Asanga, but also pieces of wonderful subtlety, and even elements of both in the brilliant opener I Ching: Fire Over Water by Per Nørgård.  From the mellower end of the spectrum are the Dessner, Aho and Hosokawa works for marimba, and the Stockhausen piece for vibraphone.  All of it ear-bending stuff from a master of his arsenal of instruments.

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bonus concert - Sofia Gubaidulina's Glorious Percussion

Gubaidulina's spectacular work, which includes elements of improvisation, was performed by the Colin Currie Group and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in August of last year at the Edinburgh Usher Hall.  It was paired in this concert with music from Greig's Peer Gynt, performed by the orchestra.

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Iannis Xenakis, David Del Tredici, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, George Crumb (2014 compi rec. 1965-78)

Great compilation put together by Sony Classical as part of their "Prophets Of The New" reissue series in 2013/14.  Much of the series was also released as a "Masterworks Of The 20th Century" budget box set, a chunk of which has already been posted here - Boulez, Extended Voices, Columbia-Princeton, Crumb, Partch, and Takemitsu.  More to come in due course - I may as well finish the box.

In contrast to the ones above that reissued those landmark LPs in their entireity, this collection picks highlights from three different records.  Firstly we get half of a 1969 album by the Festival Chamber Ensemble under Richard Dufallo, starting with Xenakis' Akrata - I think I prefer this one to the EIDMC Du Paris/Simonovich version, it's got a bit more oomph to it.  Then there's 24 engrossing minutes of David Del Tredici's Syzygy, with soprano and ensemble all over the shop in a setting of James Joyce's Ecce Puer.

Next up is side two of "Electronics & Percussion - Five Realizations By Max Neuhaus" released in 1968.  Stockhausen's Zyklus is scored for a solo percussionist playing multiple instruments, and notated in a spiral so that the player can start anywhere.  The ear-shredding John Cage noisefest Fontana Mix-Feed ("realized 1965") has previously featured here alongside an album's worth of other realizations of it by Neuhaus.  Closing the compilation is a typically bewitching and gorgeous George Crumb piece taken from a 1978 LP.  Lux Aeterna For Five Masked Musicians is scored for soprano, sitar, bass flute/recorder and two percussionists, and as always, makes me want to dig deeper into Crumb.  (More of him at SGTG here and here, plus link in first para above.)

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P.S. whilst reading about Max Neuhaus, I discovered his amazing Radio Net project from 1977 - well worth a listen.  Read about it and d/l the two hours of audio (192 kbps, but hey ho, fine for an old radio tape) here.

Daniel Kientzy - Musiques Contemporaines Pour Saxophones (1988)

The great avant-garde/modern classical sax master Daniel Kientzy, previously highlighted starring in ensemble works here and here, returns to these pages in an early compilation of pieces for solo saxophone.  Or indeed more than one sax at once, or sax plus electronics - it's all here at its most mind-bending, in one piece each from the seven composers listed on the cover.

If you love solo saxophone doing insane, improbable things, this is the album for you for sure; if you think it might be a bit much to sit through 71 minutes of this stuff, I recommend taking it in stages.  Personal highlights would be the blasting opener, the overture to Aurel Stroe's Eumenides opera (can never resist a Romanian composer) and the closer, Horacio Vaggione's Thema, that sounds like it's being played inside a gigantic cement mixer.  Then enjoy the frenzy of tape effects layered on to Aulodie by François-Bernard Mâche, then the slowly integrating layers of the Stockhausen piece, then the rest will be a breeze.  I promise.

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Electronic Music For The Mind And Body (2013 compilation, rec. 1958-62)

Cheekily parodying the title of Country Joe & The Fish's legendary psych classic, this inspired compilation from Cherry Red's él subsidiary turned back the clock a further decade for 80 minutes of truly revolutionary sound warping.  The first 35 of these 80 minutes is an entire album in itself, originally composed and recorded 1959-60: Stockhausen's still-astonishing Kontakte.  Working at WDR with Gottfried Michael Koenig, Stockhausen laid out his grandest vision yet of electronic tones, timbres and (in live situations) spatial movement.  A second version would later add in David Tudor's piano and Christoph Caskel's percussion.  Whether in that form or in this pure electronic recording, it remains a magnificent, otherworldly soundscape to get lost in.

Next up on this CD is Iannis Xenakis' Orient-Occident, already featured here, devised in 1960 as a film soundtrack for Enrico Fuchignoni, and featuring a definite Pierre Schaeffer influence.  The shortest piece on the compilation is György Ligeti's Artikulation, recorded at WDR in 1958 with the assistance of Koenig and Cornelius Cardew.  One of only two electronic pieces that Ligeti would fully realise, Artikulation certainly packs a lot into its four minutes, arranging different recordings of noises before piecing them together at random into a 'conversation' of sorts, as if inventing a new machine-language.

Lastly, we get two pieces of prime John Cage.  The 20-minute Cartridge Music was composed in 1960 for performers following a chance score, armed with phonograph cartridges and contact microphones which are then struck against various objects.  This recording is an amalgamation of four performances of the score by Cage and David Tudor in 1962.  The final track on the CD is Aria With Fontana Mix, another 1962 recording overlaying two Cage compositions - his free-score Fontana Mix (much more noisily used by Max Neuhaus a few years later) is used for various tape sources, whilst Cathy Berberian performs his vocal work Aria over the top.

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