Browse by Artist: STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ

Artist:	STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ
Title:	Aus Den Sieben Tagen
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$8.00
Catalog #:	HMA 190795

Two sections of Stockhausen's legendary "musique intuitive" work, an obscurist set of instructions for improvisational guiding. Recorded in 1969, with Stockhausen in the control room operating filters and potentiometers, this is performed by long time electronic music ensemble members like Aloys Kontarsky (piano), Michel Portel (reeds), Johannes Fritsch (viola), Alfred Ailings (tam-tam), Rolf Gehlhaar (tam-tam), Harold Boje (electronium), Jean-Pierre Drouet (percussion) & Jean-Francois Jenny-Clark (bass).

Artist:	STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ
Title:	Stimmung
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	HMU 807408

Performed by Theatre of Voices, under the direction of Paul Hillier; recorded Sept. 2006. "With the 1968 Paris première of his 'Stimmung,' Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928) exploded the very definition of vocal performance. This musical tour de force, made up of an unbroken sequence of 51 sonic models -- entirely built on the overtones of B-flat and presented in every possible voice combination -- experiments with new compositional techniques and deconstructs the mechanics of speech and song. Paul Hillier, a champion of early and contemporary vocal repertoire, leads Theatre of Voices in his newly created 'Copenhagen Version' of a 20th-century milestone that today remains as relevant as ever. Hillier's life-long relationship with 'Stimmung' began in the 1970s when he performed it as a member of Singcircle with the composer at the controls. With its serene but highly-charged aural landscape, the work is surprisingly one of Stockhausen's most accessible compositions: spiritual yet humorous, mystical yet worldly and erotic in its poetry." Hybrid CD/SACD disc that can play on any CD player, as well as SACD players.

Artist:	STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ
Title:	Bass Clarinet & Piano
Label:	MDG SCENE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	MDG 6131451CD

Performed by Voker Hemken (bass clarinet) and Steffen Schleirmacher). "On his new MDG release, Steffen Schleiermacher pays homage to the great Karlheinz Stockhausen, who will turn eighty next year. This pianist specializing in modern music offers new interpretations of Stockhausen's 'Klavierstuck IX,' the most frequently performed work of modern piano music, as well as of 'Tierkreis', together with the clarinetist Volker Hemken. For Stockhausen, the piano was made for experimentation, and it was for this instrument that he wrote his serial compositions. In the transition between extremes and the mediation of them, 'Klavierstuck IX' nevertheless makes a very strong impression. Karlheinz Stockhausen has always had very clear ideas about the way of the world, about the cosmos and his role in it, about his own significance, about music and about esoterism: 'I began occupying myself with the twelve human characters of the zodiac, of which I until then had only a vague notion. While inventing each melody I thought of the nature of children, friends, and acquaintances born under the signs concerned.' 'In Freundschaft' exists for various solo instruments, but Volker Hemken of course presents it in the original version. His wealth of experience as a solo bass clarinetist in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra hardly prepared him for all that Tanze Luzefa holds in store in the way of meowing, purring, smacking, enticing, insisting, and tempting. Howling laughter, vigorous rhythmic clicking, and stamping are also heard."

Artist:	STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ
Title:	Mantra
Label:	NEW ALBION
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	NA 025CD

1986 recording of this infamous piece (originally premiered in 1970), performed by Yvar Mikhashoff (piano) and Ole Orsted (electronics). "...each of the sections comprises a microcosm from a different perspective. 'Mantra' is such a piece in that each of of its parts reflects itself, backwards, as in a mirror, standing on its head, elongated, compressed, twisted. It is super-redundant, pervasive, just like a bottle of Coke, that instead of a beverage produces the famous concept of 'Coca-Cola'... it is played once quite openly, and then as a kind of prayer, time and again in all its ratios of pitches, durations and tempos by the pianists. Indeed, it is a quasi-meditative, exotic, beautiful late- and post-serial music." --Reinhard Oehlschlagel.

Artist:	STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ
Title:	Kontakte
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	WER 6009

Kontakte is a Stockhausen classic from 1959, for electronics, percussion and piano (played here by David Tudor). One of his "moment form" compositions, which "...lead up to no climax, nor do they have prepared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are rather immediately intense and -- permanently present -- endeavor to maintain the level of continued 'peaks' up to the end; forms in which at any moment one may expect a maximum or a minimum, and in which one is unable to predict with certainty the direction of the development from any given point... leading to timelessness."

Artist:	STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ
Title:	Klavierstucke I-XI
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$44.00
Catalog #:	WER 60135

Pioneering piano studies, composed throughout the 1950s, recorded in 1985-86 by Herbert Henck. "Stockhausen experimented with different modes of attack and pedaling which modify the vibration of the strings and with silent depression of the keys which frees particular strings to resonate. In this way he achieved a 'filtering' of the sound spectrum that comes after the attack... the result was a rich palette of overtones and echo sounds which emphasized as never before the piano's characteristic resonance and its unique ability to suggest sound effects in perspective." --Herbert Henck

Artist:	STOCKHAUSEN, KARLHEINZ
Title:	Tierkreis, Zodiac
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	WER 6659

"As part of the celebration of Karlheinz Stockhausen's 75th birthday, Wergo is proud to release an exceptional new recording of Tierkreis and Zodiac, under the direction of Mike Svoboda. 'Zodiac' is one of Stockhausen's most beautiful and accessible compositions. He created several different arrangements, allowing each interpreter to create his or her own version by using special formulas. With regard to the first of his two realizations on this recording, Svoboda says,'I approached the composition the way jazz musicians approach a standard: take inspiration from the melody and harmonic sequences and then express themselves spontaneously and very individually.' In his second realization, Svoboda gave the musicians just a few structures and asked them to improvise freely on Stockhausen's melodies. These two versions of one of Stockhausen's most important works are a fitting tribute to this controversial master of contemporary composition."

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