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Browse by Label: HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Artist:
BARTOK, BELA
Title:
Romanian Dances, Sonata, Suite, Improvisations, En Plein Air
Label:
HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:
CD
Price:
$9.00
Catalog #:
HMA 1951094
Performed by Claude Helffer (piano). "Bartók, a pianist himself, composed music for the piano throughout his life. The earliest known works, written in 1890 (Sz 1 to 7), were piano pieces, and the
Third Piano Concerto
was completed on his deathbed. The five works on this recording encapsulate the essence of this vast production of piano music."
Artist:
XENAKIS, IANNIS
Title:
Pléiades
Label:
HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:
CD
Price:
$9.00
Catalog #:
HMA 1955185
Mid-line priced reissue of this classic:
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:
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:
BARTOK/LIGETI/KURTAG
Title:
Metamorphosis
Label:
HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:
CD
Price:
$20.00
Catalog #:
HMC 902062
Featured works: Bela Bartók's
Metamorphosis
, Gyorgy Ligeti's
String Quartet No.4
and Gyorgy Kurtag's
12 Mikroludien
. "It is often said that the essence of classical music lies in the principle of variation. However, when constant transformation of the musical material drives scores like these quartets by three eminent Hungarian composers of the 20th century, the resulting sonic impressions are very different. The governing principle here is metamorphosis, an idea as dear to Bartók as it was to the compatriots who succeeded him. On this fascinating CD, Cuarteto Casals offers a persuasive case for both concept and execution of this modernist compositional style."
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)."
Artist:
HILLIER, PAUL
Title:
Stories
Label:
HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:
CD/SACD
Price:
$21.00
Catalog #:
HMU 807527
"Paul Hillier leads Theatre of Voices in a fascinating program centered on the artistic milieu of the contemporary composer Luciano Berio. Hillier says, 'Although not all these composers actually knew each other, I think of them as a group of mutual friends with shared interests and predilections. If there is a link between them it is perhaps the influence of John Cage, though it could almost equally have been the personality of Cathy Berberian.'" Featured works: Luciano Berio -
A-Ronne
; Cathy Berberian -
Stripsody
; Sheldon Frank -
As I Was Saying
; John Cage -
Story
; Roger Marsh -
Not a Soul but Ourselves
; Jackson Mac Low -
The Turtle Asymmetries
. Stereo/multichannel hybrid SACD that can be played on any CD player.
Artist:
BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN
Title:
Goldberg Variations
Label:
HARMONIA MUNDI (FRANCE)
Format:
2CD
Price:
$20.00
Catalog #:
HMU 907560
Peroformed by Fretwork, arranged for voils by Richard Boothby. "The
Goldberg Variations
for harpsichord are a pinnacle of Bach's compositional output. Like many of Bach's works, it has been transcribed for many different solo instruments and instrumental combinations. Fretwork's version for viol consort is one of the most unusual, in that it looks backward in time instead of forward. Bach was essentially a conservative composer, well grounded in the styles and structures of the past. His fondness for the sound of the viola da gamba is well documented and it provides additional justification for re-projecting this masterpiece of counterpoint through the sound-lens of 'old fashioned' instruments."
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