Pierre Henry - Odyssée (2012) { {10CD Set, Decca ‎476 514-2}
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© 2012 Decca Records / Pierre Henry / Universal Music France | 476 514-2
Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Classical / Experimental Electronic / Musique Concrète

A really well-titled collection – given that it features the most important steps in the long musical journey of Pierre Henry – easily one of the most important electronic musicians of the 20th Century! The package offers a heck of a lot of amazing music for the price – and is very heavy on Henry's crucial 60s recordings – including both his funky analogue grooves, and his much more abstract sonic compositions! Much of this material has been issued over the years, but never in a package this complete – and the depth of the sounds here is stunning – a set that should be given as a textbook to anyone who ever thinks about making any sort of electronic music.

This ambitious and beautifully produced two-CD set includes nearly all of Iannis Xenakis' chamber music for strings, piano, and strings and piano combined. Chamber music constituted a small part of the composer's output, since large ensembles and large forms were vehicles more commensurate with the aesthetic of his monumental, granitic music. There are no small pieces here, though; in each of these works, ranging from solos to a quintet for piano and strings, Xenakis was able to express his uncompromising vision no less ferociously than in his orchestral works. While all of the pieces have an elemental character, many with a visceral punch, the actual sound of the music is surprisingly varied, and the individual works have distinctive and individual characters. In spite of the weightiness and rigor of the music, the tone is not necessarily heavy, and some pieces, like Evryali for piano and Dikhthas for violin and piano, have moments of what could almost be described as whimsicality.

Luc Ferrari - Danses Organiques (1999) {Elica MPO-3340 rec 1971-1973}
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© 1971-73, 1999 Elica | MPO-3340
Electronic / Avant-Garde / Musique Concrète / Modern Classical / Electroacoustic

The composer lends his tape recorder to two girls who are to meet and to start a relation and then builds his imaginary folklore music around their confidential dialogue, sighs and moans, with the addition of his deep observations on organ-ic music. The resulting music has a groovy rhythmic quality in its surreal synthetic development and is outstandingly modern with its similarities to some unacademical artisanal music made today with electroacoustic means.

John Cage - Early Music - Edwin Alexander Buchholz, Joanna Becker (2007) {Edition Wandelweiser Records ‎EWR 0711}
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© 2007 Edition Wandelweiser Records | ‎EWR 0711
Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Classical / Minimalism

An enchanting suite of ‘Early Music’ composed by John Cage and performed by Edwin Alexander Buchholz (accordion) and Joanna Becker (violin), including: ‘Dream’ [1948]; ‘In A Landscape’ [1948]; ‘Six Melodies’ [1950]; and ‘Souvenir’ [1983]. Serving to upend preconceptions of Cage being more valued for his concepts than his music, this set holds some truly magickal sound organisation that requires no prior knowledge of the artist or his ideas in order for it to be enjoyed.

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Mantra - Jean-François Heisser, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger & Serge Lemouton (2021) {Mirare MIR518}
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© 2021 Mirare / Yamaha | MIR518
Classical / Avant-Garde / Experimental / Piano / 20th Century

As with many of the composer's works, live instruments are combined with electronics in Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mantra. Written in 1970, the work is scored for two ring-modulated pianos. Each player is also equipped with a chromatic set of crotales (antique cymbals) and a wood block. A short-wave radio producing morse code or a magnetic tape recording of morse code can either be controlled by one of the pianists or by a separate performer. Mantra was written for the great piano duo of Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky. The pianists performed at the work's premiere and on it's first recording in 1971 for Deutsche Grammophon. This exciting new recording from Mirare features pianists Jean-Francois Heisser and Jean-Frederic Neuburger, accompanied by Serge Lemouton on electronics.

There’s something special about this version of Different Trains. It’s the one commissioned by Wolfgang Sawallisch and David Robertson and their respective orchestras (Philadelphia and Lyon) in 2001 for string orchestra, and it impresses immediately by the richness of its vastly expanded sound palette. Though it may be heresy to say so, I never found the original string quartet version entirely convincing. This recording shows why: inside that frenetic chamber work was a much larger piece trying to get out, and here it is, fully realised, as it were, in glorious technicolor.

Pierre Henry - Polyphonies (2017) {12CD Set, Decca ‎4814504}
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© 2017 Decca Records / Radio France / Universal Music France | 4814504
Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Classical / Experimental Electronic / Musique Concrète

This is a massive testament to the one of the most innovative and influential bodies of work in 20th century music. Pierre Henry (who died in 2017 at the age of 89) was one of the pioneers of musique concrète. His work and ideas resonate through the spectrum of electronic music, from tape collage to the theme from animated series Futurama (which was based on his track Psyché Rock). This artist-compiled 12-disc box samples his output from the 1950 collaboration with Pierre Schaeffer, Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul, to some of his final works, with nine pieces seeing their first release. Contains an 112-page booklet with extensive notes with artwork displaying Henry’s “concrete paintings”.

Horacio Vaggione - Musique Pour Piano et Électroacoustique (1995) {Mnémosyne Musique Média LDC 278 1102}
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© 1995 Mnémosyne Musique Média | LDC 278 1102
Classical / Electroacoustic / Contemporary Classical / Solo Piano

Horacio Vaggione has been integrating computers to his approach to composition since the 1970s. His body of work includes electroacoustic pieces, mixed pieces, and instrumental music. Born in 1943 in Argentina, Vaggione has been residing in France since 1978. He studied piano with Ornella Ballestreri and composition at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina, 1959-62) and in Buenos Aires (Argentina) with Juan Carlos Paz. He holds a PhD in musicology from Université Paris 8 (France, 1983), where he worked under Daniel Charles.

Arnold Schoenberg - Chamber Music - Arditti String Quartet (1995) {2CD Set, Auvidis–Montaigne MO782025}
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© 1995 Auvidis / Montaigne | MO 782025
Classical / Modern Classical / Avant-Garde / Chamber Music

Arnold Schoenberg exercised very considerable influence over the course of music in the 20th century. This was particularly through his development and promulgation of compositional theories in which unity in a work is provided by the use of a determined series, usually consisting of the 12 possible different semitones, their order also inverted or taken in retrograde form and in transposed versions.

Pierre Henry - Galaxie Pierre Henry (2021) {Decca Records France rec 1958-2017}
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© 2021 Decca Records France / Universal Music | 4855652
Classical / Avant-Garde / Modern Classical / Experimental Electronic / Musique Concrète

‘Galaxie Pierre Henry’ features landmark and previously unreleased compositions by one of the 20th Century’s most influential composers. Galaxie Pierre Henry, a new 13CD box set and eAlbum featuring compositions by musique concrète pioneer and one of the 20th Century’s most influential composers Pierre Henry, is out now. The new anthology includes a selection of 33 works composed between 1958 and 2017, a third of them released for the first time. Galaxie Pierre Henry compliments the 12 CD box set Polyphonies, released in 2017, and together they present a comprehensive anthology of Pierre Henry’s work.

Pierre Schaeffer - Solfège de l'objet sonore (1967) {3CD Set, Ina-GRM ina c 2010/11/12 rel 2005}
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© 1967, 2005 Ina-GRM | ina c 2010/11/12
Classical / Electroacoustic / Electronic / Musique Concrète

It is a well-established fact that our approach to music is generally twofold: this is the physicists' as well as the musicians' doing. One the one hand, music is considered to be based on acoustics, or even mathematics, which ought to give it the status of a science; on the other hand , it is acknowledged that it proceeds from psychological and sociological phenomena which, over the ages, have developed into an art, itself depending on various crafts. There is no longer any contradiction between the two approaches so long as one is prepared to accept them jointly, with enough insight to respect the methods proper to each end of the "chain."

Robert Normandeau - Figures (1999) {empreintes DIGITALes ‎IMED 9944}
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© 1999 empreintes DIGITALes ‎| IMED 9944
Electroacoustic / Electronic / Modern Classical / Musique Concrète / Acousmatic Music

Normandeau is one of the leading contemporary musique concrète artists, and this, his third solo release, makes it easy to see why. His attention to sonic detail is unmatched, and each of his pieces amply rewards repeated and careful listening. The opening piece continues a cycle started on his previous Empreintes Digitales release Tangram. "Le Renard et la Rose" is the third part of a cycle that includes Tangram's "Éclats de Voix" and "Spleen," based exclusively on the use of the human voice. Each of its five parts associates an emotional state with a sonic framework, from the opening laughter of Babbling and Rhythm to the closing Serenity and Texture.

Roland Kayn - A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound (2017) {16CD Set, frozen reeds fr7/22}
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© 2017 frozen reeds | fr7/22
Experimental / Modern Classical / Cybernetic Music / Electroacoustic / Electronic

Twenty-two movements, 14 hours and 16 CDs worth of spangling cosmic sound play: this premiere release of the magnum opus by German composer Roland Kayn is a colossus and a marvel. Roland who? In a profession that glorifies big egos and fetishises the kind of creative genius that demands total control, Kayn went to more selfless extremes. He worked in the pioneering electronic studios of Germany and the Netherlands in the mid-20th century and built fastidious command systems with the aim of making “self-sufficient cybernetic music”.

Philip Glass - Glass Organ Works - Donald Joyce (1993) {Catalyst 09026 61825 2}
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© 1993 Catalyst / BMG Music | 09026 61825 2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Organ

In his liner notes, Tim Page writes that he asked Donald Joyce to see if he thought there were "Wagnerian dimmensions in these scores." With this CD, Page concludes that Glass is reconciled "not only with Wagner but with an entire genre of compositions for the organ." Well…

Roland Kayn - Etoile du nord & Ghyress für Ilse-Emily Kayn (2005) {2CD Set, Reiger-records-reeks KY-CD 005-1/2}
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© 2005 Reiger-records-reeks ‎| KY-CD 005-1/2
Experimental / Modern Classical / Cybernetic Music / Electroacoustic / Electronic

A pioneer of electronic, computer, and instrumental avant-garde music, for the majority of his life, the German composer Roland Kayn remained one of the great unheralded figures in the landscape of 20th century sound - a founding member of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, who delved into singular territories entirely his own. Fortunately, in the last few years, in part due to the release of his monumental work, A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound, by Frozen Reeds in 2017, and Die Schachtel’s deluxe vinyl reissue of his seminal composition, Simultan, last year, the scope and depth of his efforts have begun to take centre stage in the public mind.