Browse by Label: HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)

Artist:	XENAKIS, IANNIS
Title:	Pleiades
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$8.00
Catalog #:	HMA 1905185

Cheap mid-line pricing on these classic avant garde titles out of the Harmonia Mundi catalog. Pleiades is a percussion piece performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg (vibraphones, marimbas, xylophones, etc.); richly defined, timeless music that will sound good for the rest of your life. "The whole source of this polyrhythmic composition is the idea of periodicity, repetition, duplication, faithful, pseudo-faithful, unfaithful copy... still greater variations of an even greater complexity, due to the hazards of a particular stochastic distribution, lead to total rhythm, to a massy awareness of the event, to notions of clouds, nebulas, galaxies of the fragmented dust of beats organized by the rhythm."--Xenakis.

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:	BERIO, LUCIANO
Title:	Laborintus 2
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$8.00
Catalog #:	HMA 195764

Music performed by the Ensemble Musique Vivante, laying down a turbulent racket of avant-crinkle, over which the 4-piece Chorale Experimentale bellows vocal confusion. "...[Berio] has also succeeded in discovering sounds, phrasings, effects of all kinds which have permitted him to venture further and further into areas which had so far been thought impermissible or impossible for the human voice. These investigations... are magisterially reflected in the larger works and particularly in 'Laborintus II.'"

Artist:	LIGETI/HEPPENER
Title:	Lux Aeterna
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	HMC 901985

"Both György Ligeti and Dutch composer Robert Heppener belong to the generation born in the 1920s that formed the basis for the post-war avant-garde. The 1966 premiere of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna (now best known from its use by Stanley Kubrick in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey) marked nothing short of the birth of a new musical language. His later 'Sonata For Solo Viola' simultaneously evokes the polyphony of the 14th century and certain varieties of ethnic music. Written in the 1990s, it continues to emphasize complex mechanical rhythms, but in a less densely chromatic idiom. Heppener's 'Im Gestein,' a cycle of lieder to poems by Paul Celan that won Heppener the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize in 1993, is here recorded for the first time."

Artist:	SATIE, ERIK
Title:	Avant-Dernières Pensées
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$40.00
Catalog #:	HMC 902017

Performed by: Alexandre Tharaud (piano), Juliett e Noureddine (vocals), Jean Delescluse (tenor), Eric Le Sage (piano), Isabelle Faust (violin), David Guerrier (trumpet). "With this recording, Alexandre Tharaud aims to serve justice to Erik Satie -- the real Erik Satie. Chock full of surprises and humor, Tharaud strives to reveal the coherence between Satie's life and music. The first CD is devoted to piano solo works. The second offers a selection of duos, many of which are world premiere recordings. Featuring well-known artists such as chanson singer Juliette, violinist Isabelle Faust, pianist Eric le Sage, trumpet player David Guerrier and tenor Jean Delescluse, this album will also include a private Internet access code to listen to bonus tracks and discover more about Satie's life and work." "My aim in these two discs has been to offer the richest possible panorama of Satie's piano and chamber music, ranging over his whole lifetime... Immersed in the world of Satie, we were touched, often deeply moved by the trust he shows in his interpreters." -- Alexandre Tharaud

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:	O'REGAN/MACHAUT/BRYARS
Title:	Scattered Rhymes
Label:	HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	HMU 807469

Performed by Orlando Consort and Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Paul Hillier. "On this fascinating recording, Paul Hillier leads the Orlando Consort and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir in the world premiere recording of 'Scattered Rhymes' -- a vibrant and powerful new work by Tarik O'Regan (born 1978). O'Regan, a two-time British Composer Award winner, was educated at Oxford University and completed his postgraduate studies at Cambridge, where he was subsequently appointed Composer in Residence at Corpus Christi College. O'Regan now divides his time between Trinity College, Cambridge and New York City, where he has held the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship in Music Composition at Columbia University and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard. In 'Scattered Rhymes' (2006), the composer combines two 14th-century texts that toy with the ambiguities of intertwining sensuous and divine love. To reinforce the work's medieval connections, 'Scattered Rhymes' is designed to be framed or paired with Guillaume de Machaut's 'Messe de Notre Dame' (circa 1364). This seminal work is brilliantly performed here by the Orlando Consort. Completing this inventive program are two motets: 'Ave Regina Coelorum' by Guillaume Dufay (c. 1400-1474) and the haunting 'Super Flumina' by Gavin Bryars (born 1943)."

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