Browse by Label: CYBELE RECORDS (GERMANY)

Artist:	TETRAPHONICS SAXOPHONE QUARTET
Title:	The Invitation: Saxophone Quartets of the 20th Century
Label:	CYBELE RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	CYBELE 261001CD

Features: Philip Glass: "Concerto for saxophone quartet" (1995), Frank Reinshagen: "The Invitation" (2002), Barbara Thompson: "Saxophone Quartet No. 2" ("From darkness into light" in six movements), Zdenek Lukas: "Rondo per 4 sassofoni" (1970). Bonus: Johann Sebastian Bach: "Fugue No. 20 in A minor a 4 voci BWV 865" (The Well-Tempered Piano, Vol. I). Performed by teh Tetraphonics Saxophone Quartet: Stefan Hass, soprano saxophone; Elmar Frey, alto saxophone; Volker Ax, tenor saxophone; Richmond Mays, baritone saxophone. "Formed in 1994, the Tetraphonics Saxophone Quartet is a truly diverse band, made up of freelance musicians who play in various orchestras across Germany. Theirs is the classic sax line-up of soprano (B flat), alto (E flat), tenor (B flat) and baritone (E flat), the different characters of which are explored in Glass's four movement Concerto. The repeated rhythmic patterns of the first movement typical of Glass and the other so-called minimalists, contain some complex and concentrated music that is superbly shaped and articulated. The mood may seem a touch melancholic but Glass manages to create pulses of sound that constantly evolve, apparently reinventing themselves as the music progresses." Stereo/multichannel hybrid SACD that can be played on any CD player.

Artist:	RIHM, WOLFGANG
Title:	Streichquartette Nr. 1,4,8,5
Label:	CYBELE RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	CYBELE 261101CD

"The string quartet takes a prominent place among Wolfgang Rihm's immense output. Already in his earliest compositional phase, at the age of 14, 15, 16, Rihm, born in Karlsruhe in 1952, wrote his first quartets, although the scores of these works were not published. In 1970 he published his First String Quartet which was given the opus number 2. This piece, whose tonal language is akin to that of the Second Viennese School with an orientation toward twelve-tone structure and with a predominance of sevenths, ninths and tritones, has a texture which is at times quite thinned out and which then suddenly breaks apart all together: 'As if suddenly destroyed: eradicated' is written above measure 109 in the score, after which the final five bars continue, bearing the marking: 'tense!' Fermata rests, hesitating echos of previous material and the abruptly erupting last chord. Following the Second String Quartet, also written in 1970 and bearing the marking 'opus 10,' and the Third String Quartet, 'im innersten' (with utmost intimacy), which was written in 1976, Rihm in the Winter of 1980/81 turned his attention to his Fourth String Quartet in three movements: I. 'agitato, allegro alia marcia, allegro ma non troppo'; II. 'con moto, allegro andante, allegro molto'; III. 'adagio,' Rihm noted, 'It is at once a straggler and at the same time a hint of things to come.' On the one hand it condenses the confrontation with tradition which was addressed in the first three quartets and is reminiscent of works such as the late Beethoven Quartets, of Mahler, of Shostakovitch and of Janacek's Second Quartet, 'Intimate Letters' (1928). On the other hand however, it also anticipates aspects which later became the subsequent quartets. For example, the first bar of the Eighth String Quartet followed by a general pause, echoes the softly floating final repetitions in the viola and cello from Rihm's Fourth Quartet. Also Rihm's Fifth through Seventh Quartets seem to be drawn from the Fourth, although the music of the later quartets employs more fissured textures and is more gestural than its older relatives. Nonetheless, the Fourth Quartet is not merely a transitional piece or a hinge-composition, but a work with its own integrity and which in addition is a turbulent piece with many riddles which only in the future will (perhaps?) be unrivaled." Stereo/multichannel hybrid SACD that can be played on any CD player.

Artist:	ENSEMBLE GELBER KLANG
Title:	Farben Der Stille
Label:	CYBELE RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	CYBELE 361201CD

Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996): 'Rain Spell'; Scott Roller (1959-) 'Serraval'; Morton Feldman (1926 1987): 'For Frank O'Hara'; Kaija Saariaho (1952 -): 'Nymphea for String Quartet and Live Electronics.' Performed by Ensemble Gelber Klang: Klaus Dreher (percussion); Albrecht Imbescheid (flute), Michael Kiedaisch (percussion); Jurgen Kruse (piano); Gareth Lubbe (violin); Axel Porath (viola); Thomas Reil (clarinet); Scott Roller (violoncello); Maria Stange (harp); Ulrike Stortz (violin); Bryan Wolf (live electronics). "Were it possible to portray music in hues, white would offer us the most generally applicable coloration. Like no other color, white enables us to visualize the very aesthetical idea, which contemporary composers of the last decennia have explored: the dissolution of the distinction between sound and silence. Thus we can regard many contemporary compositions to be acoustical representations of what Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) described as the relationship of White and Silence, in his poetics The Spiritual in Art (1910): 'When considering White more closely, which is often seen as a non-color ( ... ) it appears to be a symbol of a world, where material properties and substances have disappeared altogether. Such a world is high above us, so we do not perceive its sound. Thence a great Silence comes towards us, resembling a cold and endless wall, indestructible and impassable. White therefore affects our psyche as a great Silence that is absolute. We perceive it as a non-sound, very much like a pause in the middle of a musical piece; the pause that temporarily halts the development of a certain piece or content, not being the conclusion of a certain development. This is a Silence which is not dead, but full of possibilities. White resonates like a silence that can suddenly be understood. It is a youthful nothingness, or more precisely: a void that exists before the beginning, before birth.'" Stereo/multichannel hybrid SACD that can be played on any CD player.

Artist:	ZIMMERMANN, BERND ALOIS
Title:	Requiem For A Young Poet
Label:	CYBELE RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	CYBELE 860501CD

"The Requiem for a Young Poet, a lingual for speakers, soprano and boss soli, three choirs, orchestra, jazz combo, organ, and electronic sounds, to texts from various poets, features and news reports, is a late masterpiece of its composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970). In the piece, Zimmermann, one of Germany's leading composers of the post-World War II era, arrives at a totality: a summation of his own biography and also a summation of the intellectual situation of his lifetime, the 50 or so years between the October Revolution and the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops. The Requiem, written principally between 1967 and 1969, is the sprawling realization of a grand oratorio project which had preoccupied Zimmermann since the mid-1950s, as well as the most intense incarnation of his 'pluralistic' way of musical thinking. At the time of its premiere, the Requiem could be compared to no other work. In our age, when cross-boundary explorations are quite familiar to us and many works no longer neatly fit into the categories of 'oratorio', 'cantata' or 'radio art', Zimmermann's 'lingual' seems all the more relevant. In an introductory text written for the premiere of his Requiem, the composer emphasized that while working on the piece, he had not thought in terms of cultivating a concrete artistic personality, but rather in imagining how the young poet himself would present to listeners the preceding fifty years and all of its multiplicity, seen from his own intellectual, historical and linguistic perspective and thus ours. Zimmermann arrived at the decision to use his own life span as the foundation of his Requiem at a rather late stage in the process and after varied earlier drafts. Although the composer listed the years of composition as 1967 to 1969, the Requiem should be seen in the context of larger thematic concerns which Zimmermann had been developing for some fifteen years and which found expression in many works leading up to, and stretching beyond, the Requiem. For this SACD recording, Zimmermann's own recommendation for the spatial distribution of the 250 or so participants was followed, which means that the three choirs were arranged in front of the auditorium (choir I), on the left respectively on the right (choir III) and behind the auditorium (choir II). The eight-track tape compiled by Zimmermann in 1969 has been painstakingly restored, so that the recordings of Papandreou, Hitler, Ribbentrop, and all others are again heard as they should be. The eight channels of sound heard on this SACD recording of the concert on 23 June 2005 in the Concertgebouw Haarlem (The Netherlands), were reproduced per the composer's intentions, via eight loudspeakers arranged throughout the hall. This SACD is the first surround sound recording of the Zimmermann Requiem. Owners of a home theatre system can thus enjoy the Requiem even outside the concert hall, as Zimmermann had originally conceived." Stereo/multichannel hybrid SACD that can be played on any CD player.

Artist:	ECKERT/REITH/BRUMMER
Title:	Ex Machina: Le Son Qui S'Arr�te Le Son �clat�
Label:	CYBELE RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	CYBELE 960101CD

Gerald Eckert, (electroacoustic composition); Dirk Reith, (electroacoustic composition); Ludger Brummer, (electroacoustic composition). "'lis voudraient avoir un corps' (They would like to have a body) -- this line from a poem by Paul Eluard could characterize the works on this CD, for they have one thing in common -- the attempt to come to terms with body, space and time. The basic material consists of synthetically generated sound points, sound complexes or an existing composition, and this is given the impression of depth (by means of reverberation and a special distribution over several loudspeakers). Sound processes are thus created which distance themselves from their basis and even alienate themselves, and whose very being is led from the concrete to the abstract."

Artist:	BARLOW, CLARENCE
Title:	Klavierwerk Von Klarenz Barlow
Label:	CYBELE RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	CYBELE 960308CD

"Clarence Barlow has written many pieces for piano, including thirteen preludes and fugues. The idea for the composition originated in a discussion about which similarities European and Indian music display. In the cycle, written between 1974 and 2006, Barlow interweaves the melodic peculiarities of Indian ragas with those of the European tradition dating back to Johann Sebastian Bach. Barlow has also written for the player piano, a normal instrument in appearance, but one driven by a computer. Four of his works for the player piano are featured on this Super Audio CD. In 1978, Barlow developed the computer program 'Autobusk' while writing his piano piece 'Cogluotobusisletmesi.' The inspiration for the piece came on a bus journey in eastern Anatolia (Turkey), when he heard the microintervals of local music: in his piece, he makes extensive use of microintervals, above all quarter tones. He sketched a structure of areas with different densities, each one narrowly defined. Thus, certain fields are rich in events or have very few and some areas feature complex rhythms, while others are regular. The composer used 'Autobusk' to help him devise a score which could be performed. 'Cogluotobusisletmesi' lasts for 30 minutes even and contains four sections of progressive durations: 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes, and 16 minutes. The original solo version of 1978 is so complex, that Barlow created a version for four pianos in 2006 in which the score delegates a specific part to each pianist." Performed by Hermann Kretzschmar (piano); Klarenz Barlow (player piano); Benjamin Kobler, Hermann Kretzschmar, Jurgen Kruse, Irmela Roelcke (4 pianos); James Avery (conducter).

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