Browse by Label: NEOS (GERMANY)

Artist:	BORBOUDAKIS, MINAS
Title:	Piano Works
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10701CD

Performed by Minas Borboudakis, piano and tape. "The composer and pianist Minas Borboudakis, born on Crete in 1974, studied piano and theory in his native city, Heraklion, with Giorgos Kaloutsis and then in Munich and Hamburg with Wilfried Hiller and Peter Michael Hamel (composition), with Olaf Dressler and Ursula Mitrenga (piano); he attended master classes with George Crumb, Luciano Berio, Wolfgang Rihm, Alexander Nasedkin, and Rudolf Kehrer. Minas Borboudakis is one of the most sought-after Greek composers of his generation. He works with renowned ensembles and soloists as the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the SWR Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, the Münchener Kammerorchester, La Camerata of Athens, Kremerata Baltica, the Ensemble Modern, and the percussionist Peter Sadlo. In 2007, Kent Nagano will conduct the premiere of Borboudakis's new work of musical theater at the Münchner Opernfestspiele. The focus of his repertoire as a pianist is, in addition to the performance of his own compositions, the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His oeuvre has received a number of awards: the Günther-Bialas-Kompositionspreis, the Stipendium der Stadt München, the Bayerischer Staatsförderpreis für Musik, the Rodion-Shchedrin-Kammermusikpreis, the scholarship of the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. His music is highly charged with emotion and conforms to no dogmas; rhythm and harmonies are influenced by his Greek origins and moves between the poles of ancient Greek literature, philosophy, and the modern natural sciences."

Artist:	BRASS, NIKOLAUS
Title:	Orchestral Works Vol. 1
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10702CD

Featured works: "The Structures of Echo -- Lindauer Beweinung", (Music for 32 Voices and Orchestra, 2002). "Void II" (music for Piano, Saxophone, Percussion and Orchestra, 2001). "It is rare to find composers who can use sounds to tell stories of absolute void and who manage, conversely, in passages of virtual silence to give some sense of the richness of overriding entities. Nikolaus Brass, born in Lindau on Lake Constance in 1949, is one such artist -- a quiet, reflective, and, in the profound sense of the word, friendly man. Because he has never been at the center of the scenes that set the tone, he has, unforgiveably, been scarcely noticed by the very people to whom he has essential things to offer. His music does not seek to shine artistically but is rather the result of a search for the essential core of things that is as truthful as it is intensely probing."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Music For Piano 1-84
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$42.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10703/4CD

Performed by Sabine Liebner, piano; recorded Oct., 2003. "Cage had discovered small irregularities, elevated points, or tiny spots on the surface structure of the paper, distributed completely irregularly. Within a predetermined interval of time he marked with ink as many of these irregularities as he could find. Thus he obtained an absolutely random constellation of a field of points. Then he placed a sheet of transparent music paper over it to convert the dots into exact pitches by means of the key signature and ledger lines. Using chance procedures, each of the notes determined in this way was assigned a dynamic value between pianissimo and fortissimo as well as, in some cases, a sharp or flat. 'Music for Piano 1' was produced in this way in 1952 and choreographed by Jo Anne Melcher as was 'Music for Piano 2' of the following year, for the dancer Louise Lippold. As a balance to his incessant efforts as an artist to make chance graspable in new ways in the points of coincidence and intersection of series of events that occur independently of one another, in 1954/55 he became increasingly at home in the universe of mycology. Perhaps he was haunted by another metaphysics of finding? Wherever he found an opportunity to find and identify mushrooms, Cage pursued this passion with professional depth -- in part, as he explained with a smile, because the word 'mushroom' immediately precedes 'music' in many dictionaries. Over the years he became an expert on mushrooms. He wrote a book on mushrooms with illustrations covered with Japanese silk paper; on an Italian television quiz show he won a lot of money with his expert knowledge. He meditated on the mysterious subterranean grow of mycelia, lichen, and carpophores in Japanese Zen gardens or American forests, and he could enthuse and sympathize with the horizons of sound and silence of this or that mushroom, whether they grew alone or in collections, or in bundles of five to six individual growths, saying that a such a spot of earth is precious."

Artist:	EOTVOS/ZIMMERMANN/SMOLKA
Title:	Musica Viva 15
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10705CD

Featuring compositions by Peter Eötvös, Bernd Alois Zimmermann & Martin Smolka. "Peter Eötvös is one of those who set the tone in the new music scene, not just as a composer but also as a conductor and teacher. 'Cap-ko' is the homage to Eötvös' great model, Bartók. That applies even to the details. Bartók's penchant for parallel lines gave Eötvös the idea of using an instrument that makes it possible to play these parallel lines on the piano not with two hands but rather with one. This necessitated that Eötvös rediscover the digital keyboard. For that made possible that a second note sound with every note played, with the interval between the notes alterable at will, as with an organ mixture. In addition, there is a traditional grand piano with a fixed right pedal, which produces an echo-like reverberation with every note played that is never muted. Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays both instruments alternately.

       Bernd Alois Zimmermann does not have to be introduced anymore. With his opera 'Die Soldaten' and his 'Requiem Für Einen Jungen Dichter' he became known in the 1960s as one of the leading composers of the generation that emerged after the Second World War. The violin concerto is a work that displays the characteristics of Zimmermann's composition: It sets its tone forcefully and unmistakably.

       Martin Smolka works with intervals that he finds in 'natural' sounds. His works, in which he uses various forms of microtonality, are performed at all the current festivals for contemporary music -- this one, recorded at 'musica viva' in Munich was premiered in Donaueschingen in 2000: 'I was asked to write a choral piece on the subject of violence in our society. But I was rather attracted by the violence that our society commits -- against nature, against our home planet. And I preferred to be positive in my music rather than creating a kind of protest song.'"

Artist:	XENAKIS, IANNIS
Title:	Music For Keyboard Instruments
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10707CD

Realized by computer. 'Herma' for piano (1961); 'Mists' for piano (1981); 'Khoaï' for harpsichord (1976); 'Evryali' for piano (1973); 'Naama' for harpsichord (1984). Daniel Grossmann, MIDI programming. "This is the first recording of Xenakis' music for keyboard instruments realized by computer -- unplayable by human hands! The desire to hear a composition exactly as Xenakis had in all probability imagined it -- the notation is precise enough -- remains legitimate nevertheless. The conductor Daniel Grossmann presents possibly the first attempt at a reconstruction of the aural imaginings of the composer. The recordings come across as spontaneous, but are in reality the result of intensive work at the computer. And it was precisely in the field of loudness relationships that a plethora of single notes had to be finely gradated. Rhythmic successions of many other single pitches -- ones that produce the aleatoric sound clouds and which Xenakis deliberately notated imprecisely -- had to be pondered about too, in 'Mists,' (3:15-6:30) for example. Achieving a balanced sound within exactly structured textures and articulating optimum relationships of loudness between superimposed but discretely structured layers remain at the center of Grossmann's approach. He also availed himself of the chary use of panorama effects, that is to say, the acoustic distribution of various notes and note groups between the left and right loudspeaker channels, thus making evident the individuality and autonomy of distinct planes of sound. The strict basic pulse and tempo given by the computer have been rendered slightly more 'human,' and are no less the worse off for this. One important aim of his work was, in the end, to garner a convincing dramaturgy within a single work, and thus bring about the optimum rendition of the relationship between the loud and the soft sections as well the best possible lengths of the crescendi and decrescendi. Paradoxically enough, it is just such a computer-aided recording that wholly evinces through its very rationality the enormous liveliness and freshness immanent in the music of Xenakis. A CD recording is not -- well not primarily, at least -- designed for the reproduction of music within a public concert, and is inapplicable to the problem pertaining to the reception of electroacoustic music. The present recordings should be judged on the basis of any normal recording, namely as a documentation of a single act of interpretation with its own artistic claim. This CD must nevertheless be understood not as a substitute for a 'real' recording already in existence or one to be made in the future. The intention is to enhance the reception of the composer's music -- from the audience and performer perspective alike."

Artist:	SCHONBERG & LUCIANO BERIO, ARNOLD
Title:	Opus 21 Musik Plus
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10709CD

"Schönberg wrote this work between March 12 and July 9, 1912, shortly before he developed the twelve-tone system. He chose 21 poems from a cycle by the French poet Albert Giraud, in the German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben. There is no continuous plot. Each poem describes a small scene, a lively image, a macabre anecdote, or a grotesque with the moonstruck Pierrot. Schönberg's music and the singer's 'Sprechgesang' (speech-song) fuse everything into a unity. Berio's 'Folk Songs' is a short anthology of melodies from various sources (sheet music, records, oral recollection) from various epochs and countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, France, North Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and United States), selected, harmonized and arranged by Berio. Sometimes the instrumental setting reinforces typical traits of the cultural frame from which the songs originate, other times these traits are disguised or sublimated. Berio himself writes that 'these arrangements are my contribution to the prevention of folk song performances with piano accompaniment and, of course, constitute also a little homage to the artistry of Cathy Berberian.'"

Artist:	SPAHLINGER, MATHIAS
Title:	Farben der Frühe
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10710CD

Live recording of "Farben der Frühe" (for seven pianos), from 2007. Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "Spahlinger is not exactly known as a fast composer, but even by his standards the eight years it took to write this piece represent an extraordinarily long time. The premiere of the piece commissioned by the SDR in 1997 was delayed five times before it finally took place in November 2005. In the end, Spahlinger did indeed reveal something new between the rubble of tonal organization and the new construction of an architecture of sound and noise, something that had never previously been heard in this form. By doing so, he probably created a caesura not only within his own creative work but in the production of music today as a whole. The present multichannel surround recording from March 20, 2007, with the pianists of the premiere is a pioneering act of musica viva in Munich."

Artist:	OSPALD, KLAUS
Title:	Tschappina-Variationen/Konzert für Ensemble und Violine
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10712CD

Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "Klaus Ospald, born in Münster in 1956, studied composition first with Jürgen Ulrich at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and then with Berthold Hummel at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, where he completed his studies with a master class diploma. In 1985 he received a scholarship for the Cité des Arts Paris and was awarded the Förderpreis der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart in 1987. That same year he began supplementary studies with Helmut Lachenmann. In 1988 the Free State of Bavaria honored his work with the Staatspreis. In 1997 he received the XXIII Premio Leonardo da Vinci. Such important podiums for contemporary music as the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Steirischer Herbst in Graz, the Bremer Podium, the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, and the Münchener Biennale have presented premieres of his works. Klaus Ospald lives as a freelance composer in Würzburg."

Artist:	DEDIU, DAN
Title:	Piano Pieces
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10713CD

Dan Dediu (piano); Valentina Sandu-Dediu (piano). Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "Dan Dediu, born in Braila/Romania in 1967, attended the music school in Bucharest from 1981 to 1985 and then studied until 1989 at the conservatory there with Stefan Niculescu and Dan Constantinescu. He supplemented his studies with Francis Burt, at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, and with a scholarship from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung in Hamburg and the Alban Berg Stiftung in Vienna. In 1991, he received first prize at the George Enescu International Composition Competition; that same year he became assistant professor for composition and form at the National University of Music in Bucharest. In 1994, he was visiting professor at Queen's University of Belfast and attended a course in computers for music at IRCAM in Paris. In 1999 and 2001, he was artistic director of the International Week of New Music Festival in Bucharest. Since 1990, Dan Dediu has been a member of the Romanian Association of Composers, since 1992 of the national group of the ISCM. In 1998, he became professor and in 2000, chair of the composition department at the National University of Music in Bucharest."

Artist:	UZOR, CHARLES
Title:	Quartets/Quintet
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10714CD

Performed by: Wolfgang Meyer (clarinet); Esther Uhland/James Aston, (speakers); Carmina Quartett; Gitarrenensemble quasi fantasia. "In all three pieces -- the 'Guitar Quartet,' the 'String Quartet,' and the 'Clarinet Quintet' -- the melody is the comforting hand that was perhaps the oasis of calm for Saint Augustine. Just as his perception, shaken by the collision with the ego, wandered back to the content of perception, Machaut's melodies wander to me, and perhaps back again, more melodic mass than quotation, more parody than arrangement. Sometimes they are pulverized, smuggled through their spectra, or 'sung through' using traditional procedures of permutation -- inversion, retrograde, augmentation, and diminution. Husserl's On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time has occupied me for 25 years. Husserl's greatest error was perhaps the most fruitful one: the tone is not the slowest thing that decays; its parts decay at different speeds. It is not only impossible to perceive a melody phenomenological: the tone itself is an illusion. Its parts are the whole, up to the regress. With this difference between a remembered melody and one perceived now, between melody, tone, and tonal spectra -- a difference that signifies nothing other than an aesthetic weighting and tendency -- I set off on my search."

Artist:	PLATZ, ROBERT HP
Title:	Piano Pieces
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10715CD

Performed by Rolf Hind, piano; recorded at the Experimentalstudio des SWR. Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "The conductor and composer Robert HP Platz, born in Baden-Baden in 1951, studied composition with Wolfgang Fortner and Karlheinz Stockhausen and conducted with Francis Travis. Performances of his works and his conducting activity (more than three hundred world premieres) have taken him throughout Europe and to Japan and the United States. He has worked with, among others, both orchestras of the Südwestrundfunk, the DSO Berlin and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg. For 20 years, Platz headed the Ensemble Köln, which he founded, and worked with composers such as Hosokawa, Huber, Stockhausen and Xenakis. Since 1990, he has directed a composition class at the Conservatorium Maastricht that is connected with a seminar on performance practice for New Music. He is a member of the Bureau du Directeur of the electronic studio of the 'Centre de Recherches et Formation Musicales de Wallonie' (CRFMW) in Liège and is the principal guest conductor of the ensembles Alternance in Paris and Musica d'Insieme in Milan."

Artist:	RIHM, WOLFGANG
Title:	Piano Pieces
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$42.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10717/8CD

Performed by Markus Bellheim, piano; recorded 2007/2008. "Wolfgang Rihm was born in 1952 in Karlsruhe; between 1968-1976 he studied Composition in Karlsruhe, Cologne and Freiburg with Eugen Werner Velte, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Klaus Huber, Wolfgang Fortner and Humphrey Searle. In Freiburg he also studied musicology with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht. Various stipendiary grants (Villa Massimo, Rome, e.g.) and awards followed, including the Rolf Liebermann Prize, the Jacob Burckhardt Prize given by the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Foundation, the Bach Prize of the City of Hamburg, the Federal Cross of Merit and the 2003 Ernst von Siemens Foundation Prize. From 1978 onwards, Rihm has taught at the International Summer Courses in Darmstadt, and since 1973 in Karlsruhe, where he was given a professorship in composition in 1985. He is a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and of the Academy of Arts in Berlin and Mannheim. A number of festivals and concert series have been dedicated to the music of Wolfgang Rihm."

Artist:	WOLPE, STEFAN
Title:	Lieder - Battle Piece
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10719CD

Gunnar Brandt-Sigurdsson (tenor/vocalist); Johan Bossers (piano). "The turn of the year from 1929 to 1930 marked a break in the life of Stefan Wolpe: after long years and many attempts to find his place within the cultural life of the avant-garde in the Weimar Republic, he then made his definitive turn to working as a political composer and worked intensely in the areas of workers' music and agitprop. Without ever abandoning his concepts of the aesthetics of music, which tended toward free atonality, the threat of National Socialist despotism made it necessary for the Jewish avant-garde musician to respond to this threat to human freedom with his music as well. So by the end of the Second World War, he had produced various lieder and instrumental works that reflect the specific circumstances of the composer's life and hence document his development as an artist. This crucial phase of Stefan Wolpe's musical creativity, his transformation from avant-garde musician in Berlin to a pioneering mentor for New Music in America, is revealed in the works selected for the present CD."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Seven/Quartets I-VIII
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10720CD

Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "Seven" (for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola and violoncello; 1988); "Quartets I-VIII" (for 24 instruments, 1976). Performed by: Orchester Jakobsplatz München, conducted by Daniel Grossmann. "John Cage's Quartets I-VIII is one of the most unusual and sophisticated orchestral works I know. It was written for the bicentennial of the United States of America. Cage used eight old American chorales, which he then reformed into an entirely new work with the help of the Chinese oracular work, the I Ching. The basic idea is to have just four instruments of the orchestra playing together at any time. As a result, new groups are constantly forming into variously composed quartets. Cage used the I Ching to determine which notes are played by a given instrument. The piece seems very simple from looking at the score. But in fact the fragmentary character of the instrumentation makes it a great challenge to perform. Every musician has to count precisely so as not to miss his or her entry. But the most difficult requirement is fitting the few notes to be played into the overall structure such that meaningful phrases ultimately result. Only by carefully listening to and following the music can players cause the piece to resound." --Daniel Grossmann

Artist:	WOLFF, CHRISTIAN
Title:	Piano Pieces
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10723CD

Performed by: Sabine Liebner, piano. Features: "Tilbury 1" (1969); "Keyboard Miscellany" (1988-); Tilbury 2 (1969); "A Piano Piece" (2006); "Tilbury 3" (1969); "Snowdrop" (1970). "Sabine Liebner is active primarily as a performer of New Music. She has made numerous recordings for radio, television, and CDs as well as invitations to international festivals, both as chamber musician and as soloist. She has collaborated on projects with the composers Olga Neuwirth, Jörg Widmann, Franco Donatoni, and Christian Wolff, among others, and given numerous world and national premieres. In 1998 and 2007, she received the Music Promotion Award of the City of Munich, in 2005 a music scholarship granted by the City of Munich, and in 2007 she was named a recommended pianist by the Goethe-Institut. In recent years, Sabine Liebner's interests have focused on American composers of the 20th century. Her repertoire of American music includes Henry Cowell, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, and Tom Johnson. She plays nearly all of the piano works of John Cage and Morton Feldman."

Artist:	VA
Title:	Donaueschinger Musiktage 2006 Vol. 2
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10725CD

Features one composition Georg Friedrich Haas (concerto for light and orchestra) and one by Jörg Widmann (for orchestral groups). Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "Georg Friedrich Haas, born in Graz in 1953, studied composition with Gösta Neuwirth, piano with Doris Wolf, and music pedagogy. Since 1989, professorship in counterpoint, composition, and analysis at the Musikhochschule Graz; prizes and stipends from the Salzburg Festival, the Österreichisches Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur, as well as from the City of Vienna. Jörg Widmann was born in Munich in 1973. He studied clarinet at the Hochschule für Musik München with Gerd Starke later with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York. As a soloist, he has performed with important conductors and orchestras in Germany and abroad. His passion is chamber music, and he performs regularly with partners such as Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Kim Kashkashian and Hélène Grimaud."

Artist:	KAGEL/ALBERTO POSADAS, MAURICIO
Title:	Donaueschinger Musiktage 2006 Vol. 4
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10727CD

Performed by the Schönberg Ensemble Amsterdam, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw. Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "Mauricio Kagel, born in Buenos Aires in 1931, studied music, literature, and philosophy there. In 1957, he moved to Germany. He has taught at the Darmstadt Summer Courses; 1964-1965: professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo; 1968: head of the Scandinavian Courses for New Music, Göteborg; 1974: professor of musical theater in Cologne. Awards include the Adolf-Grimme-Preis, the Karl-Sczuka-Preis of the SWR, and the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden. Alberto Posadas, born in Valladolid, Spain, in 1967. He studied composition with Francisco Guerrero in Madrid. Stipend from the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, the audience prize at Ars Musica in Brussels. Lectureship at the Conservatorio de Música de Majadahonda in Madrid."

Artist:	NONO, LUIGI
Title:	Guai Ai Gelidi Mostri
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	2CD/SACD
Price:	$42.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10801/2CD

Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. Features "Guai ai Gelidi Mostri (1983, for 2 altos, flute, clarinet, tuba, viola, violoncello, contrabass and live electronics) and "Quando Stanno Moredno. Diario Polacco n. 2" (for four female voices, bass flute, violoncello and live electronics). "In March 1983, Nono wrote to a close friend, the painter Emilio Vedova, while staying in the Black Forest: 'I felt at the time, and still feel that I have to compose unforeseen and unforeseeable music for the Carnevali. What interests me personally is [...] not only the grey, not only the prefabricated ruptures, but also the beautiful newness that explodes -- tragically -- also violently -- but which aspires towards the most gentle newness.' At that time, Nono was in a preparatory phase at the Freiburg Experimentalstudio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation where, together with director Hans-Peter Haller, he was able to explore new possibilities of structuring time and space and to study live electronics."

Artist:	BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN
Title:	Goldberg-Variationen
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD/SACD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 30801CD

Goldberg-Variationen BWV 988. Stereo/5.1 multichannel hybrid CD/SACD release that can be played on any CD player. "First recording of the version for string trio by Dmitry Sitkovetsky, taking into account the Urtext of the New Bach Edition, Bärenreiter 1977Swiss Chamber Soloists: Hanna Weinmeister (violin); Jürg Dähler (viola); Thomas Grossenbacher (cello). Played on original instruments by Jacobus Stainer. Around the turn of the millennium, the idea formed to found a first-class Swiss chamber ensemble that would bring together leading performers on the Swiss scene with renowned guests from abroad for ambitious chamber music projects. The ensemble performs in various combinations, and its repertoire includes not only famous and rediscovered works from the Baroque to Modernism but above all, numerous contemporary compositions, many of which were composed for and dedicated to the Swiss Chamber Soloists. They have earned a reputation in particular for performances and radio broadcasts of important contemporary works by Carter, Ferneyhough, Kurtág, Ligeti, Yun, and Zender, as well as world premieres of numerous works by Swiss composers such as Blank, Dayer, Furrer-Münch, Gaudibert, Gubler, Haubensak, Holliger, Käser, Kelterborn, Kessler, Kyburz, Lehmann, Moser, Roth, Schnyder, Tognetti, Wyttenbach, Vassena, and Zimmerlin. Already in its very first year of existence, the soloist ensemble was booked for concerts and tours throughout Europe, the United States, and Australia. Numerous CD and radio recordings and countless concert reviews testify to the first-class reputation of this renowned Swiss ensemble."

Artist:	SCHUMANN, ROBERT
Title:	Concert Pour Piano Seul
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 30805CD

Florian Henschel, piano. "Florian Henschel was born in Berlin in 1970. He grew up in Nuremberg and started to learn the piano at the age of six. In 1985, while still at school, his unusual talent led not only to his being accepted as a guest student at the Nuremberg Meister-singerkonservatorium, studying double bass and piano, but, more significantly, to his embarking on a wide range of musical activities. Between the ages of 17 and 19, and working as a double bass player in the fields of both classical music and jazz, he made two recordings for duo and two for trio. He played in both formations in five European countries. From 1988 onwards, the personal support of Yehudi Menuhin for the Trio AVODAH (in which Florian Henschel played double bass) led to a live television appearance in Manchester and numerous concerts at prestigious international chamber music festivals, as well as a short appearance in the film, Menuhin -- a Family Portrait, by Tony Palmer."

Artist:	JONELEIT, JENS
Title:	Arbitrary
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40701CD

Artists: Tom Schüler (trumpet and flugelhorn); Jens Joneleit (drums, bass, electric piano, grand piano). "The word 'arbitrary' means operating freely, on one's own authority or will -- and hence what jazz has to be above all. The improvisation here is based not on tiny musical material such as phrases or themes but on musical auras. On Arbitrary the musicians 'take power' with clear and to-the-point auras: above all, the aura of the electric period of Miles Davis in the 1970s and the 'wall of sound' of Albert Ayler's rhythm section (Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock). Such an arbitrary combination of two such crucial and fundamentally different aesthetics of jazz has its dangers, but nevertheless it opens up new perspectives thanks precisely to the risks taken."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Tectonics Errata Vol. 1
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40702CD

First in a series of archival recordings from the Elliott Sharp vaults. Performed and composed by Elliott Sharp. Recorded at Studio zOaR New York, 1998. "The roots of my Tectonics project may be found in my early fascination with all things futuristic and electronic. I read science-fiction from my youngest days and planned to become a scientist... At Bard College and in graduate studies at the University of Buffalo, I worked with EML and Moog synthesizers and the Music IV programming language and began developing projects that would incorporate analog sequencers and synthesized percussion mixed with improvised guitars and reeds using extended techniques and processed with modulators, filters, and tape delay. This approach extended into instrument building and design including the slabs, pantars, violinoids, as well as fretless guitars plus doubleneck and 8-string guitarbasses with extended range. Conceptually, the music drew upon chaos theory and fractal geometry, algorithmic approaches, and acoustic phenomena... The third Tectonics CD, Errata (first released by the Knitting Factory in 1998) delved deeply into chaos and glitches, saturated timbres and hyper-pixillated rhythms."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	SyndaKit Vol. 2
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40703CD

Performed by: Orchestra Carbon: Judith Insell (viola); Rea Mochiach (percussion); Zeena Parkins (electric harp); Jim Pugliese (percussion); Ted Reichman (accordion); Marc Sloan (electric bass); Tim Smith (bass clarinet); David Soldier (violin); Evan Spritzer (bass clarinet); Joseph Trump (drums & percussion); David Weinstein (synthesizer and sampler); Elliott Sharp (electroacoustic guitar). Recorded December 1998. "Composed in 1998 for my ensemble Orchestra Carbon, SyndaKit utilizes a collection of biological metaphors to create an ever-shifting rhythmic and timbral matrix. Improvisatory and algorithmic but not improvisation, SyndaKit's essence is a transformative organism consisting of 144 composed cores on 12 sheets divided among the 12 players with a set of simple rules for their use through processes of imitation, addition, recombination, transposition, and mutation. These actions are based on the activities of flocking birds, African drum choirs, cellular automata, hunting packs, and recombinant amino acids."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Larynx Vol. 3
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40704CD

"Larynx is an analogy; the orchestra as a throat. It follows as corollary to the throat as orchestra: throat singing as practiced by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and the hoomii singing of Mongolia, as well as by related jawharp techniques found throughout the world. The natural overtone series is the melodic core of much of these musics and of much of Larynx. Ratios derived from the Fibonacci Series are used to generate tunings and melodic/harmonic material for the strings, brass, slabs, pantars and doubleneck guitarbass, as well as rhythmic material for the ensemble." Performers: Samm Bennett (drums & percussion); Lesli Dalaba (trumpet & slab); David Fulton (trombone, slab, pantar); Ken Heer (trombone, slab, pantar); David Linton (drums); Charles K. Noyes (drums); Bobby Previte (drums); Jim Staley (trombone); Soldier String Quartet: Saura Seaton (violin), David Soldier (violin), Ron Lawrence (viola), Mary Wooten (cello); Elliott Sharp (doubleneck guitarbass, soprano sax, tenor sax, bass clarinet and sampler). Recorded and mixed at BC Studio, Brooklyn, New York, June-October 1987.

Artist:	JONELEIT, JENS
Title:	Illuviation
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40705CD

Artists: Roscoe Mitchell (tenor saxophone, flute, piccolo, soprano saxophone, bass saxophone, sopranino saxophone, alto saxophone); Jens Joneliet (drums, bass and piano). "Illuviation is an attempt to start out and develop precisely from where it gets 'dangerous' for many jazz performers and fans, transgressing a certain tolerance level. Illuviation is also an attempt to cause seemingly irreconcilable stylistic directions and sound worlds to collide, but not to blur them mercilessly as in crossover or to allow one 'world' to force the other 'world' off the road, but rather to let each hear the other at the same time and to enter into a dialog previously considered impossible. As a guest on compositions by and with Jens Joneleit, free jazz legend and multi-instrumental virtuoso Roscoe Mitchell is heard here, opening up for the first time his full talent for a very different musical spectrum, thus confirming Duke Ellington's motto: 'If it sounds good, it is good.'"

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Rheo~Umbra
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40706CD

"'Flow of shadows' is how I would translate the composite neolog title of this 1997 work for Orchestra Carbon and how I might describe the musical gestures therein. In seven sections, 'Rheo~Umbra' layers through composed materials, algorithmic strategies for the ensemble, and improvisations by various soloists. The algorithmic approaches include the 'transient additive pulse' where a percussive hit and its reverberations morph into a pulsing groove. There are also hockets and phased looping/transformation of the composed material designed to gradually translate the horizontal -- notes and lines -- into vertical simultaneities. The overall sound design of the composition is an important structural element with the two keyboardists playing samples constructed by me and derived from my own extended techniques on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet as well as an array of sounds produced on the slabs, sounds then layered with their 'live' manifestations." --Elliott Sharp

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Spring & Neap
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40708CD

"'Spring & Neap' -- a central event during Carbon's 1996 Japanese tour was the Music Merge Festival taking place over 3 days at Tokyo's Shinjuku Pit Inn and bringing together a diverse and international collection of wonderful musicians including Michiyo Yagi, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Jim O'Rourke, Yumiko Tanaka, David Grubbs and more. In addition to sets from Carbon and my solo Tectonics project, I was asked to create an algorithmic structure that I would conduct, composed for a small orchestra made up of players from the festival. Re:Iterations -- it was a happy coincidence that Paul Dunkel (Associate Conductor of the American Composers Orchestra) contacted me in January 1986 about a commissioned piece for the orchestra at the same time that I had been thinking about applying my Fibonacci-series work to an ensemble of strings, essentially re-orchestrating ideas evolved on the guitar. As I was completing Re:Iterations, another useful coincidence: David Soldier had formed the Soldier String Quartet and asked me for a composition for their debut concert at the Miller Theater in NYC. I decided to re-orchestrate Re:Iterations for quartet -- 'Tessalation Row' was the result. Both pieces use the Fibonacci series to generate tunings, rhythms, and forms. All pitches are played on open strings (tuned to 1/1, 3/2, 5/3, 8/5) or overtones of those open strings. The score uses graphic modules which contain information on the various operations to be performed and give exact rhythmic, timing and pitch information. There are times when the players can vary the overtone melodies and timbres in a section but strictly within the parameters indicated in the score, not improvising. I was very concerned with identity -- the ability of sonic flux and internal detail to vary greatly in each performance without destroying the essence and exact proportions of the piece."

Artist:	JONELEIT, JENS
Title:	Maze Drum Solo
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40709CD

Jens Joneleit (drums). Recorded live on July 2, 2004 at Audio for the Arts Studio, Madison, WI. "Jens Joneleit is a gifted contemporary composer, born in Offenbach, Germany, in 1968. In his formative years as a composer, he was largely influenced by the musical environment provided by his parents who both play the piano. Realizing their son's talent in music early on, Jens Joneleit was sent to a music school to learn basic theory skills when he was seven years old. In 1975, Jens started to take percussion lessons and successively took part in performing with the marching band of his hometown, Nieder-Roden. From 1984-1986, Jens Joneleit taught himself the piano, during which time he became more interested in composing music, writing compositions for solo piano and percussion."

Previous Page Index of Labels Next Page

Artist:	SCELSI, GIACINTO
Title:	Chukrum/Quattro Pezzi/Natura Renovatur/Hymnos
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10722CD

Artist:	VA
Title:	43 Internationale Ferienkurse Fur Neue Musik Darmstadt 2006
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10821CD