Great Works Of The Last Ten Years: Your Suggestions?

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  I've been on something of a new music hiatus for a long while, and have very much lost track of what's happening today.

  I'll admit my tastes are somewhat antiquated: I'm the grandpa on the porch going "They just don't make toe-tapping numbers like Ligeti's Etudes anymore!"

  I love the 20th century up to 1940s almost unreservedly, love most of the big names from the '40s to the '80s barring the minimalists ( who I've never warmed to ), and find the '90s onwards almost a question mark, and one ( for better or worse ) mostly filled in my collection with composers who made their name in earlier periods who insisted on still being alive. If someone asked me what my favorite 21st century work would be I'd say "Magnus Lindberg's Clarinet Concerto... maybe?" and then flee the scene.

  What works in the 2004-14 decade do you find particularly outstanding?

  I'll admit my tastes lean towards the decadent ( my equivalent of eating cookie dough from the bowl is a Sorabji evening ), and way from lean works on the minimalist side, but I'm happy to hear everyone's thoughts.

 

[North Star]

Don't remind me of missing Kriikku play the Lindberg CltC in February, please.   

Some others that come to mind:

Salonen: Violin Concerto (2009) (Grawemeyer 2011)
Kalevi Aho: Clarinet Concerto (2005)
Some John Luther Adams, possibly Become Ocean
G. F. Haas's in vain is from 2000/2002, sue me for including it..

Oh, and you need to check out Henning.

[EigenUser]

  I've been on something of a new music hiatus for a long while, and have very much lost track of what's happening today.

  I'll admit my tastes are somewhat antiquated: I'm the grandpa on the porch going "They just don't make toe-tapping numbers like Ligeti's Etudes anymore!"

  I love the 20th century up to 1940s almost unreservedly, love most of the big names from the '40s to the '80s barring the minimalists ( who I've never warmed to ), and find the '90s onwards almost a question mark, and one ( for better or worse ) mostly filled in my collection with composers who made their name in earlier periods who insisted on still being alive. If someone asked me what my favorite 21st century work would be I'd say "Magnus Lindberg's Clarinet Concerto... maybe?" and then flee the scene.

  What works in the 2004-14 decade do you find particularly outstanding?

  I'll admit my tastes lean towards the decadent ( my equivalent of eating cookie dough from the bowl is a Sorabji evening ), and way from lean works on the minimalist side, but I'm happy to hear everyone's thoughts.

Have you heard anything from Thomas Ades? I really like his violin concerto. If you stretch your 10-year limit to 1997, I am a fanatic about Asyla.

I went to Philadelphia to see the orchestra of the National Center for Performing Arts (from China) perform Ravel's G major PC and Tchaik's 5th. I hardly even noticed the third piece, Wu Xing ("The Elements") by Chinese composer (and student of Messiaen) Qigang Chen. I loved it. Everything they played was phenomenal, but that was the highlight of the program for me. Reminiscent of Ligeti's Atmospheres.

[Daverz]

Try Paul Moravec.  His Tempest Fantasy won a Pulitzer.  Same instrumentation as the Messiaen Quartet.

[asin]B000MRP1VE[/asin]

[Brian]

Penderecki's horn concerto. For sure. Quijotadas, by Gabriela Lena Frank. Avner Dorman's recent percussion concerto. Works by people I know personally, like Karl Henning, Andrew Schneider, or Keith Allegretti.

Here's a chronological list I wrote for 1975-

[Fagotterdämmerung]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Have you heard anything from Thomas Ades? I really like his violin concerto. If you stretch your 10-year limit to 1997, I am a fanatic about Asyla.

I only know him from only from The Tempest, which I enjoyed but remember only vaguely ( the Ariel scenes stand out ).  I will explore deeper.

Penderecki's horn concerto.

Love that one! Big Penderecki fan here... I always forget he's still alive. 

Don't remind me of missing Kriikku play the Lindberg CltC in February, please.   

I would so loved to have seen that! 

[Ken B]

Some Glass of course and Nyman, But let me single out Robert Moran Trinity Requiem.

[amw]

Note that making some degree of peace with minimalism is very helpful in appreciating contemporary music, it being one of the most influential movements on many of the living composers—either via Glass and Reich, or via Feldman and Cage. Some of these composers you therefore won't like at first, or possibly ever.

Good composers to check out:
Richard Barrett (Dark Matter, Opening of the Mouth, CONSTRUCTION)
James Dillon (string quartets, Nine Rivers etc)
Heinz Holliger (not sure how much stuff he's written in the last decade, but definitely check out the String Quartet No. 2 and Induuchlen)
Salvatore Sciarrino (Il suono e il tacere & other recent orchestral works, Quaderno di Strada, Luci miei traditrici [this might be earlier than 2004 I don't remember])
Chris Newman (pretty much anything you can find, I'm impatiently waiting for Ghosts to arrive right now)
Liza Lim (The Navigators, Tongue of the Invisible, Device for contacting the dead etc)
Enno Poppe (I think the Kairos CD with Arbeit, Wespe et al. is the most recent, all worth hearing. Though perhaps I should have excluded him since his best works, things like Salz and Rad and Tier are mostly from 1994-2004)
Jürg Frey (I've been listening to a fair amount of the piano music, & Duos with Antoine Beuger)
Evan Johnson (L'art de toucher le clavecin 2 & 3, vocal works, literally anything else you can find—there are almost no CDs of his music so try soundcloud)
Iancu Dumitrescu & Ana-Maria Avram (Romanian husband & wife team who seem to release more stuff together than separately. Not sure what their latest projects are actually, again, check soundcloud)
Michael Finnissy (Awaz-e Niyaz, the violin stuff on the new Métier album, string quartets)
Jo Kondo (Not sure there are that many recent recordings. His style doesn't change much, though. Start with the ALM CDs Gardenia or Surface, Depth & Colour—available through the japanese amazons/HMV.jp—or the hathut chamber music disc)
Natasha Barrett (Isostasie & Prince Prospero's Party are the most recent ones I heard)
Denis Smalley (Impacts intérieurs, etc)
Eliane Radigue (the recent stuff with instruments, Naldjorlak I-III, the Charles Curtis collab etc. Actually I will also recommend Radigue to people who like John Luther Adams and La Monte Young. *cough*)
Mathias Spahlinger (my favourite is 128 erfüllte augenblicke which isn't new, but you should hear it anyway; there's a 2007 Kairos disc and some stuff on the Musica Viva series e.g. Farben die Fruhe for 7 pianos, etc)
Christophe Bertrand (d. 2010) (I found out about him from one piece on the Accroche Note 30 year recital, don't remember title)
Michael Pisaro (fields have ears... 3? 4? some number and hearing metal among others)
Vanessa Rossetto (Imperial Brick, Dogs in English Porcelain, Temperament as Waveform w/Lee Patterson, other things. Haven't heard Exotic Exit yet but considering it.)
etc.

Bad composers who write boring music (but are inexplicably popular so maybe you'll find more to like in their music):
John Corigliano (I don't know, symphonies and stuff)
John Adams (ask on his thread)
David Lang (Little Match Girl Passion, this was written by hand & other stuff that's famous)
Thomas Adès (Violin Concerto, Tevot, The Tempest)
Magnus Lindberg (Concerto for Orchestra, Graffiti and whatever he's doing these days)
Matthias Pintscher (I dunno, try the double trumpet concerto or whatever. His stuff all sounds more or less the same to me)
Georg Friedrich Haas (in vain, whose title describes the result of me trying to find something interesting in it, & the ensemble works on a NEOS disc)
Osvaldo Golijov (lots of appropriated 'ethnic' music on Kronos Quartet albums and such)
James MacMillan (check the BIS label for whatever's recent, I gave up on him a while ago. Apparently he has a new-ish Symphony No. 3 or something?)
Gabriel Prokofiev (...)
Mason Bates (apparently one of the most played American composers these days, has Stereo is King and some other albums on Innova)
Anyone Brian recommends (usually recorded by Naxos or Dacapo with the inexplicably fantastic Southwest Estonian Radio Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra under Jääñïś Gù∂åxdÿżłfsson, and described as 'accessible yet colourful')
etc.

Record labels for contemporary music (good resources for finding new stuff, usually independent so artists see decent returns):
Kairos (softcore and 'conservative' [i.e. 1940s-80s] avant-garde)
Edition RZ & Edition Wandelweiser (hardcore avant-garde and ultra-minimal)
Innova (anything & everything American)
Another Timbre (anything & everything Sheffield)
Mode (lots of weird stuff)
Lovely Music (downtown NY at its loveliest)
New Focus Recordings (lots of guitar and saxophone music for some reason, but interesting)
Empreintes Digitales (acousmatique + electroacoustic + sound installations)
col legno (like Kairos, but with more jazz and electro stuff)
Matchless (AMM)
Stradivarius (grab bag of lots of stuff ranging from new music of all flavours to medieval & renaissance. Like Innova & AT & Mode, a bit genre busting)
sub rosa (glitch, noise, industrial etc)
NEOS (SACDs, expensive, $$$, lots of great compilations from Donaueschingen & Darmstadt & etc)
whatever the other ones some guy said
(but lots of composers release/d their records independently, Stockhausen and Nyman being the big ones)

Also:
YouTube
Soundcloud
Bandcamp
(vimeo sux)

That should be a good start

edit: i thought of a few more, and got rid of some of the ones who haven't done much of note recently

edit 2: This is an off-the-top-of-my-head list. There are obviously lots of other works by the composers listed that may be as great or better, whose titles or existence I can't remember right now. There are also obviously other composers whose music I enjoy as much, I just decided I'd written enough already. Hence the list of record labels and other resources, and why this was initially presented as a list of composers rather than works. I knew I'd leave too much out.

At the same time, listing a bunch of contemporary composers with no further comment gives a combined feeling of (a) patting self on back for knowing so much + (b) relatively superficial engagement with the material. I haven't talked about contemporary music much lately because for the last few months I've been on an extended kick of late-18th-century and early-19th-century music instead, so in some senses my ears are a bit rusty, and my descriptive powers somewhat inadequate. But hopefully this provides a starting point on some level.

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  Of those listed, are there particular works by them you view as outstanding?

[amw]

I can try, yes. Look for an edit in a short period of time.

Most of them also have websites so you can look them up, listen to any audio clips posted and decide whether their music is to your taste.

[some guy]

  Of those listed, are there particular works by them you view as outstanding?

If I may make my own spin on "suggestion," what I would very strongly suggest is that you give over wanting this.

Give over this and start exploring for yourself.

I could give you dozens of things that I view as outstanding and maybe none of them will seem outstanding to you. Otherwise, I like the label approach as well.

To amw's list add Pogus and sub rosa and Stradivarius new and Metamkine and Edition Modern and Neos and Potlatch.

And add Bandcamp and Vimeo to the online resources.

But above all, if you love yourself and if you love music, then get out there and have some of your own adventures!!

[Karl Henning]

I appreciate the mentions, lads.

[some guy]

Well, we appreciate the music, so it all balances out.

[Karl Henning]

That's the beauty of it all 

[Fagotterdämmerung]

Thanks for updating your list with some suggested works, AMW. I've listened though a few this morning. I enjoyed Salz quite a bit, actually.

I could give you dozens of things that I view as outstanding and maybe none of them will seem outstanding to you.

That's why I am asking people their opinions. That there is music out there is not the question, what you think is great music is the question. If you suggest terrible music, you get a pass, so fly at it with impunity.  0:)

[some guy]

I'm not in school, and I am not taking a test, so I will just let my label and website suggestions be my contribution.

With impunity, of course!

[bhodges]

Another vote for:

Salonen: Violin Concerto - Written for Leila Josefowicz. She has a number of live recordings on YouTube with various orchestras - my favorite is with Chicago.

Gubaidulina: In Tempus Praesens - Her second violin concerto, and it's gripping.

George Benjamin: Written on Skin - Fascinating mix of new (music) and old (story). The DVD of the Covent Garden production is terrific.

And also on YouTube:

Vivian Fung: String Quartet No. 3 - A ten-minute piece played by the Dover Quartet, and I predict it will be quickly picked up by other groups.

--Bruce

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  Thanks for the suggestions, James and Brewski.

  Glad to see Gubaidulina is still active.

[chadfeldheimer]

For 2000-2014

Judged from existing recordings, there unfortunately seem to be less great works than in former decades. Hope that's mostly due to the fact, that many 21st century works have still not been published on CD/LP/MP3.


Jakob Ullmann - "fremde Zeit Addentum"

Fausto Romitelli - "An Index of Metals"

G.F. Haas - "In Vain"

Wolfgang Rihm - "Musik für Oboe und Orchester", revisited in 2002, one of the best Rihm I know

Valentyn Sylvestrov - "Symphonie No.7"

Ferneyhough - "Shadowtime", like most Ferneyhough extremely complex, unlike most Ferneyhough there is air for breathing.I listen to it mostly for the instrumental/orchestral and try to ignore the vocal part, because it sucks a bit on the only available recording.

Scott Walker - "The Drift", I think contemporary classical is the best category for this, even if he has a pop background (many years ago)


Recently ordered J.L. Adams' "Become Ocearn" after the numerous ravings in this forum and listening to snippets on Amazon and Youtube. I think it has good chances to be included into my list.

[Fagotterdämmerung]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Judged from existing recordings, there unfortunately seem to be less great works than in former decades. Hope that's mostly due to the fact, that many 21st century works have still not been published on CD/LP/MP3.

I'm pondering that as well! I was fairly up to date on what was current back in '04/'05 when I drifted into other pursuits, and, while I'm grateful for everyone's suggestions and have been listening a-plenty, I'm left with the feeling of: "Welcome to the future! Nothing's changed."

2014 isn't exactly shaping up to be 1914, but I want nothing more than time to prove me wrong.