Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

Started by gomro, May 10, 2007, 01:54:54 PM

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snyprrr

Quote from: Brewski on April 16, 2014, 08:12:08 AM
A treat! From the Bowerbird concert in Philadelphia last month, here are the four Xenakis quartets  by the JACK Quartet, filmed by Bob Sweeney.

ST-4/1,080262 (1956-62)
http://vimeo.com/91465504

Tetras (1983)
http://vimeo.com/91571707

Tetora (1990)
http://vimeo.com/91376523

Ergma (1994)
http://vimeo.com/91567602

--Bruce

gaaah >:D, looks like I'll have to try another computer. :(

Oh, when, oh when will Mode begin the cavalcade of Xenakis Releases for 2014?? huh huh when when We have been promised three, but I can see one being 'Electronic Music 3', and we know one is the brass trio game 'Linea-Agon' (for the whole cd!), so, that leaves a third mystery. Any pigeons talking in the city??

milk

I'm just discovering Pleiades and I am blown away by it. Riveting!

North Star

Quote from: milk on July 02, 2014, 02:13:49 AM
I'm just discovering Pleiades and I am blown away by it. Riveting!
Pleiades is great!
"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." - Confucius

My photographs on Flickr

milk

Quote from: North Star on July 02, 2014, 04:24:51 AM
Pleiades is great!
It's amazing to me that one can seemingly mix up all these rhythms and still have them sound coherent. I'm still at the beginning stage of listening. But I love the color of the music and the effect it has on me. It's really mesmerizing music.

snyprrr

Quote from: milk on July 02, 2014, 04:40:40 AM
It's amazing to me that one can seemingly mix up all these rhythms and still have them sound coherent. I'm still at the beginning stage of listening. But I love the color of the music and the effect it has on me. It's really mesmerizing music.

Just so you know- the Harmonia Mundi has the worst sound of all. I always recommend the Denon, followed by the BIS, followed by the Mode. There's even a good one on Erato/OOP, but, if you have the HM, please check out one of the others.

milk

Quote from: snyprrr on July 02, 2014, 07:20:18 AM
Just so you know- the Harmonia Mundi has the worst sound of all. I always recommend the Denon, followed by the BIS, followed by the Mode. There's even a good one on Erato/OOP, but, if you have the HM, please check out one of the others.
Thanks for the tip. I have the Mode.

snyprrr

Quote from: milk on July 02, 2014, 02:42:37 PM
Thanks for the tip. I have the Mode.

Check out the two harpsichord pieces and tell me what you think. Also, the ending of 'Persephassa' is absolutely extraordinary.yEA, that's a great set- though, the 'Rebonds' I can't won't- sorry, i'd have to consider it the worst i've ever heard- interpretation wise.

milk

Quote from: snyprrr on July 02, 2014, 09:13:49 PM
Check out the two harpsichord pieces and tell me what you think. Also, the ending of 'Persephassa' is absolutely extraordinary.yEA, that's a great set- though, the 'Rebonds' I can't won't- sorry, i'd have to consider it the worst i've ever heard- interpretation wise.
OK. I'll give you my reaction. It's taken me a while to get to this stuff even though you recommended it a while back. It didn't immediately click but I think now is the time. These are pretty extensive works. Let's see what I can handle on my commute tomorrow! I was just reading about his life - pretty eventful!

milk

Quote from: snyprrr on July 02, 2014, 09:13:49 PM
Check out the two harpsichord pieces and tell me what you think. Also, the ending of 'Persephassa' is absolutely extraordinary.yEA, that's a great set- though, the 'Rebonds' I can't won't- sorry, i'd have to consider it the worst i've ever heard- interpretation wise.
I'm liking everything here. And I'm finding it inspiring. I love the harpsichord stuff. I totally see what you mean when you say that Xenakis is the antidote to Feldman and vice versa. Very good way to look at it. I wouldn't have thought if it since they're so different in a way. But in another way one is the negative of the other. But I don't know how to describe more what I mean or what you mean. Different kinds of patterns that could be chaotic if they weren't somehow organic. Nothing so much subtle in Xenakis in a good way. The harpsichord stuff hooks me. And it surprises me how it totally works - I wouldn't think of putting those timbres together. Persephassa is great too - but I'd love to get the live concept. Has anyone here experienced this stuff live? The instruments are supposed to be placed around the space? A year ago I wouldn't have made sense of any of this music; now it's all I want. (I also have this crazy notion that "pop music" should be more like this some day...Here in Japan, I keep wanting the kids to forget about punk rock and start thinking about chaos...if there is ever to be a counter the way punk was a counter to something back in the day instead of the hobby it's become.)   
I like the tribal element to Xenakis - by the way. Now that's something not comparable to Feldman who is much more about the beauty of natural desolation. I wonder if I can get this into Ligeti some day.

milk


snyprrr

As Shostakovich and Xenakis just don't mix, poor Iannis has been put in the hamper for a season.  When it boils down, IX really has quite a modest sized Oeuvre. And it's quite delineated, so one can see the whole in one's mind's eye, like giant monsters from a distance, to scale.

Brian at Mode promised us three New Releases this year, and 8 1/2 months later we have to start wondering. The only New Release so far - Coming Soon- is yet another version of something I don't even care to remember. The thing is- the f.a.c.t. is is that "they" only record about 3-4 of IX's pieces, so, that's pretty much what we're going to get For Ever, unless Brian, or someone, takes it upon themselves to just get those last few Unreleased pieces out. And I do know that they would be difficult pieces to mount, given fiscal realities (perhaps Brian is stocking up on preps and moving out of the city??).

I embarrass myself with all this... Buying. :-[

CRCulver

#491
I hadn't heard the Naïve/Montaigne disc with Xenakis's Oresteia for a few years before I put it on today. Though most of the work was written in the mid-1960s, the "Cassandra" movement is an 1987 addition and appears to have sparked controversy. Looking at Xenakis's list of works, I was surprised that a few years after this recording, in 1992, he added yet another movement titled La déesse Athéna. Has anyone heard that? Is there a radio recording floating around?

EDIT: Well, I should have known to look to Youtube, as a recording is available there. I discovered classical music in a time when such recordings had to be furtively passed around on filesharing networks like Soulseek. I'm not used to the fact that anything one is looking for is readily found on YT.

amw

Quote from: CRCulver on October 30, 2014, 02:27:03 AM
I hadn't heard the Naïve/Montaigne disc with Xenakis's Oresteia for a few years before I put it on today. Though most of the work was written in the mid-1960s, the "Cassandra" movement is an 1987 addition and appears to have sparked controversy. Looking at Xenakis's list of works, I was surprised that a few years after this recording, in 1992, he added yet another movement titled La déesse Athéna. Has anyone heard that? Is there a radio recording floating around?
There's a CD recording on Mode (mode 58), which couples it with Dämmerschein (1994, first recording), Persephassa and Varèse's Amériques. Xenakis himself supervised the recordings.

snyprrr

Quote from: James on April 15, 2015, 03:05:14 AM
For our friend snyprrr ...

[asin]B00TP96SUS[/asin]



The Hypnotic Groove Of Xenakis
By TOM HUIZENGA • 22 HOURS AGO

Percussionists back in Beethoven's day could be forgiven for feeling a little bored, waiting for the infrequent roll of the kettledrum or the occasional cymbal crash. But as orchestras grew bigger, percussionists got busier — even more so after World War I, when a new generation of composers began writing specifically for percussion.

Composers like John Cage and Edgard Varèse expanded musical horizons for percussionists and others, like Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Boulez, followed their lead. The music, whether for soloist or ensemble, moved percussion into the spotlight and helped set standards for performance practice.

Japanese percussionist Kuniko Kato (who goes by the single name Kuniko) studied in Tokyo under marimba virtuoso Keiko Abe. Later she was the first percussionist to graduate from the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music.

Kuniko's new album, IX, is a terrific all-Xenakis affair devoted to two of his best-known percussion pieces.

In Pléïdes, four movements for six percussionists, Kuniko overdubs herself playing each part (watch a fascinating video). But in the two-part Rebonds ("Rebounds") she is truly alone with her pair of bongos, a tumba (large conga), tom-tom, bass drums and a set of five wood blocks.

Xenakis might be considered cerebral (he was also an architect obsessed with geometry and math), but part B of Rebonds has a hypnotic, nearly danceable groove sustained by quick pulses in the bongos and fat punctuations from the bass drums. Kuniko lays out the rhythmic layers cleanly and with confidence. She doesn't play them speedily (like Pedro Carneiro), but instead opts for fluidity and a distinctive bounce that just might make your hips sway.


sorry, had to roll my eyes at yet another false expectation- she's cute, but that's not going to mitigate against the insurmountable everest that is her competition for aaanyone's hard earned FRNs in this rep.

And hot on her heels is Timpani's new recording of his Piano Works, by some curator of modern Xenaphilia. I mean, Mode promised me THREE RELEASES IN 2014 and didn't come through with any.- unrecorded pieces and everything  :'(..............

I think we may never get a Full Discography for IX, At this point in the financial reset, how can it possibly be?

waaaaah

snyprrr

Nothing... nothing at all...

nothing from Mode...

nothing...




again,... nothing... and IF there is a new 'Rebonds' or 'Evryali', no one cares,... it's passed the point of caredom here, wtf?? Stock in Xenakis at historical lows, and still some iconic pieces languish... yea, this plays beautifully into my bitter holiday rant, bwahahaha... oh wait, I'M the one suffering here, zoinks!

Artem

This was released recently. I wonder how it compares to Takahashi on Mode.

[asin]B00SZ0ONRI[/asin]

lescamil

Quote from: Artem on December 27, 2015, 06:14:03 PM
This was released recently. I wonder how it compares to Takahashi on Mode.

[asin]B00SZ0ONRI[/asin]

It's available on Naxos Music Library. I will give it a listen shortly. It will be interesting to hear how he can handle some of these pieces. I have yet to hear a satisfying reading for many of these works.
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Mandryka

#497
Quote from: snyprrr on December 27, 2015, 10:47:01 AM



I am really drawn to the Late Works of these Final Masters of High Modernism... he's about one of the last...

Did you enjoy Tetora and Ergma? It would be interesting to know if he said anything about what he was trying to do in these later quartets, which seem so different from Tetras.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

snyprrr

Quote from: Mandryka on December 27, 2015, 11:15:49 PM
Did you enjoy Tetora and Ergma? It would be interesting to know if he said anything about what he was trying to do in these later quartets, which seem so different from Tetras.

'Tetora' I think is fantastic in it sandy desertscape of rigidity... 'Ergma' is a wtf moment... as with much of his LateLateLate work... 'Tetora' stands alone, though...

'Zythos' is one of the blankest pieces ever, though, the orchestral work 'Sea-Change' has a lot of the old IX in it including glissandi.


he claimed he simply wrote what he hadn't already wrote, so, he eschewed all the "excitement" of his earlier work...

Mandryka

Quote from: snyprrr on January 01, 2016, 09:06:23 AM
'Tetora' I think is fantastic in it sandy desertscape of rigidity... 'Ergma' is a wtf moment... as with much of his LateLateLate work... 'Tetora' stands alone, though...

'Zythos' is one of the blankest pieces ever, though, the orchestral work 'Sea-Change' has a lot of the old IX in it including glissandi.


he claimed he simply wrote what he hadn't already wrote, so, he eschewed all the "excitement" of his earlier work...

I thought that the Jack Tetora was more interesting than the Arditti, something to do with the quality of their sound, less blended maybe, I'm not sure. I shall check out Sea Change, I find Zythos a bit of a challenge.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen