Edgard Varese

Started by mahlertitan, June 07, 2007, 09:53:16 PM

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bhodges

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on May 30, 2009, 05:23:38 AM
Not quite the same thing . . . but the Chailly box does have a surprisingly smooth feel to it. (I like the box entirely, do not mistake me.)

I think this is one of the reasons the Chailly collection has been so popular.  Between his conducting and the spectacular playing and recording, Varèse has rarely sounded so seductive.

--Bruce

karlhenning

I'm looking forward to a Bugallo-Williams Duo recording of the eight-hands reduction of Amériques.  Heard them play it in Cambridge, and it was a blast!

karlhenning

(Of course, they play it with two other pianists, too.)

Dax

Here's the premiere of Déserts under Scherchen in 1954. A remarkable performance, especially for a premiere. The audience didn't really survive more than 11 minutes, if that.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/f64wj4

John Copeland

He was off his nut.   :o

petrarch

Quote from: Dax on January 11, 2010, 07:24:13 AM
Here's the premiere of Déserts under Scherchen in 1954. A remarkable performance, especially for a premiere. The audience didn't really survive more than 11 minutes, if that.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/f64wj4

There is a very interesting tv documentary on Varèse that has a segment about the premiere of Déserts. A number of different people are interviewed (Odile Vivier, Xenakis) and they describe the event in a quite detailed way. You can hear the recording of the event in the background, including the laughs and shouts. That documentary also contains some footage of Varèse on video.
//p
The music collection.
The hi-fi system: Esoteric X-03SE -> Pathos Logos -> Analysis Audio Amphitryon.
A view of the whole

some guy

The following is a letter from Joel Chadabe of EMF about the upcoming show in New York. I hope it's OK to pass it on like this:

Hello all,

When Louis Kalff, an executive at Philips Corporation in Eindhoven, Holland, called Le Corbusier in Paris to invite him to design the Philips Pavilion for the Brussels World's Fair in 1958, Le Corbusier answered: "I shall not create a pavilion, but a poème électronique. Everything will happen inside: sound, light, color, rhythm ..."

Iannis Xenakis said, "They asked Le Corbusier to design something and Le Corbusier asked me to design something ..."

For a look at the building and general background, as well as upcoming events, please visit www.emfproductions.org



An Invitation

We'd like to invite you to a virtual-reality re-creation of the multimedia spectacle presented in the Philips Pavilion in 1958, with music by Iannis Xenakis and Edgard Varèse and images chosen by Le Corbusier.

It was one of the most important artistic moments in the 20th century. For the first time, music and image had been integrated with a space to create an immersive multimedia environment. And it was a great success. More than two million people visited the Pavilion and experienced the show.

The show is about 15 minutes in duration. The presentation will take place this coming Friday, January 15, at 7, 7:30, 8, 8:30, 9, and 9:30pm at Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South. The public admission is $1 per person per show at the door.



Another invitation

But more ... we'd like to invite you to a behind-the-scenes special fundraising event at 6pm, including the first public show.

The re-creation of the Philips Pavilion was conceived and directed by Vincenzo Lombardo, Professor of Informatics at the University of Turin, Italy. Professor Lombardo, in video, photographs, and sound, will take you through the historical detective work to demonstrate how the reconstruction of the Philips Pavilion and the multimedia show, with its music and images by Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, and Le Corbusier, was accomplished. He will guide you through a unique moment in our cultural history.

Admission is $50 for this special event. We'd be grateful for a more generous donation in support of our programs. If you're a student, donate what you can. To reserve a space, send an email to suzanne@emf.org.

To make an online payment, go to:

http://www.cdemusic.org/emf/emf-innercircle.cfm

Or call us at (888)749-9998.


Best,

Joel

greg

Quote from: Dax on January 11, 2010, 07:24:13 AM
Here's the premiere of Déserts under Scherchen in 1954. A remarkable performance, especially for a premiere. The audience didn't really survive more than 11 minutes, if that.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/f64wj4
I wonder what some of them are saying?
The audience is extremely annoying, anyways...

Kaiser

Quote from: Dax on January 11, 2010, 07:24:13 AM
Here's the premiere of Déserts under Scherchen in 1954. A remarkable performance, especially for a premiere. The audience didn't really survive more than 11 minutes, if that.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/f64wj4

Wow! This is one supercharged performance. Very cool! Thanks for sharing. Here's a link to a fun article Frank Zappa wrote about how he discovered Varese's music:

http://rchrd.com/mfom/zappa-varese.html

When I re-read this article a few nights ago I was surprised to read the description of the LP - I've had  the same record in my collection for a couple of years now (rescued with a bunch of other records from a "freecycle" listing in my area) and had no idea this was Zappa's "holy grail" Varese record! My copy is in surprisingly good shape and sounds great. The record jacket makes note of the fact that the sessions were supervised by Varese himself. Kinda cool! Here's what the cover looks like:

"Music is organized sound" - Edgard Varese

Maciek

#29
Quote from: pjme on July 22, 2008, 02:07:58 PM
Volume 2 is out and gets very good reviews:

from Naxos:


I absolutely need to get this - if for no other reason, then simply because I am a die-hard fan of Camerata Silesia. (Not to mention the fact that Lyndon-Gee, a great promoter of Pawel Szymanski's music, also deserves my support. ;D ;D ;D)

Ugh

IMO Deserts was his absolute masterpiece - a long and painful decade-long compositional process culminating a scandalous radio premiere which nearly ended the funding for Schaeffer's electronic studios in Paris - where the interpolated recorded electronic parts were put together (of among other things recordings of a factory). Following the scandal, Varese apparently cried and was never invited to work in France again, nor was he content with the final product, having originally envisioned it as a large scale multi-media event (originally titled Espace).

For some reason, untypical of Varese, he did allow for performances of the work without the electronic interpolations - as on this recording:



But IMO this is somewhat incomprehensible as it makes the work lose its' novelty.
"I no longer believe in concerts, the sweat of conductors, and the flying storms of virtuoso's dandruff, and am only interested in recorded music." Edgard Varese

Ugh

Quote from: some guy on January 11, 2010, 10:45:10 AM
The following is a letter from Joel Chadabe of EMF about the upcoming show in New York. I hope it's OK to pass it on like this:

Hello all,

When Louis Kalff, an executive at Philips Corporation in Eindhoven, Holland, called Le Corbusier in Paris to invite him to design the Philips Pavilion for the Brussels World's Fair in 1958, Le Corbusier answered: "I shall not create a pavilion, but a poème électronique. Everything will happen inside: sound, light, color, rhythm ..."

Iannis Xenakis said, "They asked Le Corbusier to design something and Le Corbusier asked me to design something ..."

For a look at the building and general background, as well as upcoming events, please visit www.emfproductions.org



An Invitation

We'd like to invite you to a virtual-reality re-creation of the multimedia spectacle presented in the Philips Pavilion in 1958, with music by Iannis Xenakis and Edgard Varèse and images chosen by Le Corbusier.

It was one of the most important artistic moments in the 20th century. For the first time, music and image had been integrated with a space to create an immersive multimedia environment. And it was a great success. More than two million people visited the Pavilion and experienced the show.

The show is about 15 minutes in duration. The presentation will take place this coming Friday, January 15, at 7, 7:30, 8, 8:30, 9, and 9:30pm at Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South. The public admission is $1 per person per show at the door.



Another invitation

But more ... we'd like to invite you to a behind-the-scenes special fundraising event at 6pm, including the first public show.

The re-creation of the Philips Pavilion was conceived and directed by Vincenzo Lombardo, Professor of Informatics at the University of Turin, Italy. Professor Lombardo, in video, photographs, and sound, will take you through the historical detective work to demonstrate how the reconstruction of the Philips Pavilion and the multimedia show, with its music and images by Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, and Le Corbusier, was accomplished. He will guide you through a unique moment in our cultural history.

Admission is $50 for this special event. We'd be grateful for a more generous donation in support of our programs. If you're a student, donate what you can. To reserve a space, send an email to suzanne@emf.org.

To make an online payment, go to:

http://www.cdemusic.org/emf/emf-innercircle.cfm

Or call us at (888)749-9998.


Best,

Joel

Did you get a chance to go?
"I no longer believe in concerts, the sweat of conductors, and the flying storms of virtuoso's dandruff, and am only interested in recorded music." Edgard Varese

some guy

If I could have combined it with other things in New York and maybe Montreal, I would have gone.

I did fly from Portland, OR to San Francisco for a single concert once--which fortunately turned out to be one of the more exciting concerts of my life--but in S.F. I could stay with my cousin for free, and I combined that with a jaunt down to Santa Cruz to get an interview with David Cope.

Still. It was very tempting! I tried to get someone, anyone, to go to this, so I could live vicariously. But to no avail. :(

Ugh

btw, I sent you a PM, did you get it?
"I no longer believe in concerts, the sweat of conductors, and the flying storms of virtuoso's dandruff, and am only interested in recorded music." Edgard Varese

Kaiser

Quote from: James on February 09, 2010, 10:37:45 AM
Zappa's last project bringing everything full circle was a production of Varèse works performed by the Ensemble Modern conducted by Peter Eötvös entitled The Rage & The Fury  Album & Movie... it hasn't seen the light of day yet unfortunately. According to Eötvös it's really phenomenal.

More info here >> http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/unreleased/The_Rage_And_The_Fury.html

Wow! Thanks for the link, James! I hadn't even heard of this recording / filming session. Hopefully this thing does make it out to the public and doesn't end up festering in the vault with so much other great stuff. A dvd would be magnificent, but I'd even settle for an audio-only release if it came to that. Goodness knows the ZFT has caught a lot of flak over the years (some justified) with regards to what gets released. But this Varese project just sounds too good to give up on!
----------- Chris
"Music is organized sound" - Edgard Varese

MDL

Here's a lazy cut'n'paste job from a post I made on the What Concerts Are You Looking Forward To? thread:

I've just booked all three concerts in the Southbank Centre's April Varèseathon:

April 16th, Queen Elizabeth Hall:

Edgard Varèse: Ionisation for 13 percussionists
Edgard Varèse: Equatorial for bass & ensemble
Edgard Varèse: Density 21.5 for solo flute
Edgard Varèse/Chou Wen-Chung: Etude pour espace
Edgard Varèse: Dance for Burgess for chamber orchestra (fragment)
Edgard Varèse: La procession de Verges for tape
Edgard Varèse: Déserts for wind, piano, percussion & tape
Edgard Varèse: Poème électronique for tape

David Atherton conductor
Cathie Boyd staging
Sir John Tomlinson bass
EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble
Jonathan Golove cello theremin
Natasha Farny cello theremin
Sound Intermedia

And two concerts on Sunday April 18th:

Queen Elizabeth Hall:

Edgard Varèse: Hyperprism for wind & percussion
Edgard Varèse: Un grand sommeil noir for voice & piano
Edgard Varèse: Octandre
Edgard Varèse: Offrandes for soprano & chamber orchestra
Edgard Varèse: Intégrales for wind & percussion

David Atherton conductor
Cathie Boyd staging
Elizabeth Atherton soprano
Sound Intermedia

Festival Hall:

Edgard Varèse: Nocturnal for soprano, male chorus & small orchestra
Edgard Varèse: Arcana
Edgard Varèse: Tuning Up arr. Chou Wen-Chung
Edgard Varèse: Amériques

National Youth Orchestra

Paul Daniel conductor
Cathie Boyd staging


I booked these in person at the Southbank Centre, but now, looking at the website, I realise that I could have saved 20% because I'd booked all three concerts. Bollocks! Still, there's a tip for anybody else who's thinking about going to all three concerts.

Oddly, the Festival Hall balcony is not being used for the NYO's grand finale, and I got the impression that not many tickets had been sold as of mid-January. I hope there are going to be more people in the audience than there are on stage!   

snyprrr

ok people, this thread really needs the cumulative recording review system. There aren't thaaat many recordings, and, I'm sure at least a couple of you have every version of some works.

Starting with Ameriques and Arcana, could  get some clarification on which version I should probably like the best? I used to have Chailly, which I had to sell for money, so I don't remember, and I currently have the Mode, Varese/Xenakis disc, which, really has turned me off the piece. Ultimately, it may be the siren again (it's aaaalways the siren ::)), but, either way, I am definitely interested in getting a copy for life. So, what do we have?

1) Boulez/Sony

2) Boulez/DG

3) Nagano/Erato

4) Chailly/Decca

5) Mehta

6) Abravanel

7) Craft

8) Izquierdo(sic)/Mode

9) G-L/Naxos

10)

This is just off the top of my head. So, can we have all out war here? :P ;D

...or, is there already a consensus?

If you want, throw Equatorial in there too.


I just got the Percussions de Strasbourg doing Ionisation on this awesome Philips box. The siren here is so subtle and beautiful that it truly brings out the Terminator-like feel of the piece.

snyprrr

Quote from: snyprrr on July 10, 2010, 09:17:16 AM
ok people, this thread really needs the cumulative recording review system. There aren't thaaat many recordings, and, I'm sure at least a couple of you have every version of some works.

Starting with Ameriques and Arcana, could  get some clarification on which version I should probably like the best? I used to have Chailly, which I had to sell for money, so I don't remember, and I currently have the Mode, Varese/Xenakis disc, which, really has turned me off the piece. Ultimately, it may be the siren again (it's aaaalways the siren ::)), but, either way, I am definitely interested in getting a copy for life. So, what do we have?

1) Boulez/Sony

2) Boulez/DG

3) Nagano/Erato

4) Chailly/Decca

5) Mehta

6) Abravanel

7) Craft

8) Izquierdo(sic)/Mode

9) G-L/Naxos

10)

This is just off the top of my head. So, can we have all out war here? :P ;D

...or, is there already a consensus?

If you want, throw Equatorial in there too.


I just got the Percussions de Strasbourg doing Ionisation on this awesome Philips box. The siren here is so subtle and beautiful that it truly brings out the Terminator-like feel of the piece.

help

some guy

#38
Quote from: snyprrr on July 10, 2010, 09:17:16 AM
Starting with Ameriques and Arcana, could  get some clarification on which version I should probably like the best? I used to have Chailly, which I had to sell for money, so I don't remember, and I currently have the Mode, Varese/Xenakis disc, which, really has turned me off the piece.
Which of the two is "the piece"? I'm guessing Ameriques because of the siren reference, but your list has Mehta on it, and I don't think he ever did Ameriques, did he?

So here's my two cents worth: Chailly for Ameriques, if only because that's the (slightly) longer original version,* and Mehta for Arcana. I have several recordings of Arcana. None of them come up to Mehta's level. Lyndon-Gee is OK, but if the Mehta is too hard to find, Slatkin's is a good second best (even if it's coupled with Holst's The Planets, of all things!).

Abravanel for Equatorial, for sure.

*I see that Lyndon-Gee's Ameriques is also the original version. (Buy the two Lyndon-Gee, why not--they're on Naxos, so it ain't no thing--and see how you like that. Then maybe think about supplementing with some of the classic performances.)





petrarch

I have the Boulez/Sony, the Xenakis/Varèse/Mode and the Chailly/Decca. The Boulez/Sony will probably always be my reference, just because it was the first one I got almost 20 years ago. That CD made Varèse become one of my favorite composers. Note that the Chailly/Decca is the original version (with bigger orchestra) and not the better known 1927 revision.
//p
The music collection.
The hi-fi system: Esoteric X-03SE -> Pathos Logos -> Analysis Audio Amphitryon.
A view of the whole