Living Composers

Started by Dr. Dread, April 13, 2009, 07:50:05 AM

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some guy

Yes, Stradivarius, in their times future series. They do include, wisely so, other nationalities, but Italian composers are their focus.

Stradivarius times future has mostly recent orchestral and chamber music, including pieces for orchestra and voice and chamber ensembles and voice. Also a few pieces for instruments and electronics. No electroacoustic or laptop that I've seen. That kind of thing is for

A Silent Place, also an Italian company, which puts out recordings and rereleases of the Italian duo My Cat is an Alien (Maurizio and Roberto Opalio). ASP also releases a bunch of other people, too, like Text of Light (Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, Ulrich Krieger, Dj Olive, and Tim Barnes), Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson, and Loren Connors. These are noise, live improv, laptop and turntable artists.

I've found that for new instrumental music, the series put out by some of the big festivals are pretty interesting. The Donaueschinger Musiktage releases, for instance, which came out on col legno for a long time and are now being put out by Neos. Both of those labels have quite an interesting output. BMG, of all things, distributes the massive Musik in Deutschland series, which while mostly German music includes all sorts of other countries--their schtick being something like "all the music important to Germany." So they have Cage (who was in Darmstadt for awhile) and Barlow (who moved to Cologne from India and worked there for many years) and many others.

Some of the electroacoustic labels are Mnemosyne, which distributes the music from the IMEB festival, Metamkine, which distributes all the other French electroacoustic stuff that Mnemosyne doesn't, and empreintes DIGITALes, which puts out a lot of different composers from all over the world but mostly Canadians.

Edition Modern puts out the music of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram mostly (it's their label) but also several other Romanian composers, too, including one of their students (I think), Petru Teodorescu.

And for the older European (and UK) avant garde, cpo is quite respectable.

Guido

Quote from: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:40:34 AM
Earlier Kancheli tends to have more fire in the belly, to put it briefly. The later stuff often repeats the successful formula, but with less urgency. Edward and I have had this discussion here before - we're in agreement about this, and in fact it's a view I've often seen rehearsed. (It's a similar argument to that often had about Arvo Part post, say, 1985.)

Where I differ slightly from Edward, I think, is that I put the date at which Kancheli 'lost his fire' a little later, and that I find some of the more recent pieces extremely compelling. We'd both agree in urging you towards the symphonies; but I'd also put his concertante viola piece Vom Winde beweint very high up my list whereas Edward, IIRC, likes it but not so much. I think it's a stunner, though, and I'd recommend it to anyone - there are a few recordings, but Bashmet's is the one to have IMO. His more recent concertante viola piece, Styx, is to my ears a shocking piece; I can't stand it, and the contrast between the two is a constant reminder of Kancheli's progress. But then his even more recent piece for Rostrovopich (Simi), his Lament for Nono, and his ...a la duduki - all these available on ECM - I think these are very good pieces too, which proves that one shouldn't generalise. The other stuff on ECM, though - and that's most of his more recent output - I can happily do without.

So which are these Kancheli works that have "more fire in their belly"? I also have mixed feelings about Vom Winde beweint - I like it, but not as unhesitatingly as you do... I like the stripped down-edness of Simi, and also like Lament very much too. I need to listen to ...a la duduki and Bright Sorrow again. Why was he so sad?
Geologist.

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

greg

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 13, 2009, 11:19:41 AM
With that Henning cat, of course, you sometimes get contemplative and discordant.
That's so Feldman...

c#minor

Quote from: snyprrr on April 13, 2009, 04:06:01 PM
I predict that SuperBach will be born on the winter's solstice 2012, so just wait a few years ;D.


Oh how we will all rue the day we ever decided to buy ANY music before SuperBach.

But seriously will you be pissed if i start a band called SuperBach b/c that's possibly the funniest damn thing i've seen on this site.


snyprrr

SuperBach was Cato's idea of a Bach+microtones, maybe with a little A.I. injection...the all-time super composer. I came up with the name (and the cool logo!).

I'm currently in negotiations over rights and can't comment.

Dundonnell

Quote from: vandermolen on April 14, 2009, 03:57:21 AM
Some living composers whose music I like:

Vasks
Sculthorpe
Bedford
McCabe (some, like The Chagall Windows, Notturni ed alba)
Arnell
Yoshimatsu
G. Butterworth
Henning  :)

A. Butterworth, Jeffrey :)