Brian Ferneyhough

John Tavener's "Mandelion" and Other Contemporary Music for Organ

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Brilliant organ music played by a superb performer!

John Tavener's "Mandelion" and Other Contemporary Music for Organ

Manufacturer: Nimbus Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00000IGNJ
Release Date: 1999-03-23

Tracks:

Mandelion
Sieben Sterne
Region Of The Nymphs
Black Sun: Heating
Energy Of The Moon
Fountain Of Mercury
Acid Of the Fountain
Tail Of The Peacock/Union Of Sun And Moon
Solidifying
Our Water, Solitary Fire
Enlightenment

Tracks:

Prelude
Lament
Toccata
Trio For Organ
Toccata And Fugue
I 'Father, Forgive Them; For They Know Not What They Do'
II 'Woman, Behold Thy Son...Behold Thy Mother'
III 'My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?'
IV 'Verily I Say Unto Thee, Today Shalt Thou Be With Me In Paradise'
V 'I Thirst'
VI 'It Is Finished'
VII 'Father, Into Thy Hands I Commend My Spirit'
Pari Intervallo
Arched Forms With Bells

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant organ music played by a superb performer!.......2003-03-04

Absolutely excellent recording, a must for all the classical music fans out there - if you want to listen to beautifully played, wonderful music then Kevin Bowyer is by a long stretch the most brilliant performer I have ever had the honour of listening play. I have many of his other CD's in my varied music collection, and I must say that it is an enlightening experience each time I insert the disc into my machine!

Brian Ferneyhough: Flurries; String Trio; In nomine a 3; Streichtrio; Incipits

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wonderful chamber stuff all the way

Brian Ferneyhough: Flurries; String Trio; In nomine a 3; Streichtrio; Incipits

Manufacturer: Stradivarius
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Brian Ferneyhough: Funérailles
The Music of Elliott Carter Vol. 7; Boston Concerto, Cello Concerto, ASKO Concerto, Dialogues
Brian Ferneyhough: Fourth String Quartet; Kurze Schatten II; Trittico per g.s.; Terrain
The Music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 6
Tristan Murail: Gondwana; Désintégrations; Time and Again

ASIN: B0008GIW2E
Release Date: 2005-06-14

Customer Reviews:

wonderful chamber stuff all the way.......2005-07-01

Ferneyhough's music speaks within a framework of traditional genre for the most part, It never strays too far from known venues as the String Quartet and the Chamber setting.
His music still carries the torch of modernity's agendas some believe to either have fallen off the ends of the globe for its persisting "alienating" experiences (that it doesn't engage the predictable cash box vigorously)or to have that "heroic" dimension Adorno loved so much for its "aesthetic in exile" persists in its resistance to the normal flow of the commons.

The "String Trio" here is a persistent example still engaging the modern sensibility for its exposed clarity as it did for Schoenberg and Webern, also (W.Zimmermann,Pascal Dusapin,and J. Kalitzke have endeavored trios as new parts of the literature.) Here Ferneyhough's Trio seems relatively more facile(underogatorily) in its surface complexity more tutti statements than his other moments of the string repertoire,as the 'Second and Third String Quartets'. I suppose anyone's musical language does transform itself,out of itself(not as Kafka's bug let's hope) even if one's aesthetic as Ferneyhoughs at times seems to have been hard-boiled and overdetermined.
His opera experience with "Shadowtime"(after the life of Walter Benjamin) seems to have been a "cleansing" experience, with the direct engagement of the human voice and the theatre.And it seems felt in all the pieces here ones approching that opera in sketches, (There is simply more human intervention in an opera than the cloistered private experience of writings string quartets.)
But here the "String Trio" exhibits a little more rarefied beauty, clean threadbare lines unencumbered without inter-referential,'filtered' pitch configurations within a 'context' here the richness then seems to have more linear telescoping triggers,always looking downstream for resolution. Likewise "Flurries" another interesting chamber setting after poet A/R Ammons,who had appealed to Ferneyhough's penchant for unstructured shapes is as fodder to be shaped into decipherable dodecaphonic materials within the work.And the exposed linearity is what excites Ferneyhough, for he has written the most interesting chamber music. The therapeutic and ethical dimension of Ammons poetry finds its way into the compositional process here.The work takes its time an elegant use of space beginning as a string duet,then the clarinet with piano punctuation, like a miniature cadenza.Microintervals as well,in the Clarinet tossed the works consitution off center skewed into Ammons therapeutic. Then the Horn's turn to reveal itself with flighty Piccolo. Much like unencumbered dialogue,(non-Socratic) the Horn is quite arrogant,like it refuses to be part of the work ethically it belongs somewhere else. The strings respond with their own tortuered language of glissandi and double-stopped punctuations.(Complexity in-and-of-itself seems to be a requisite sight for subjectivity to relish in its own exclusion from the mainstream,from interactive communication with other humans) the private place, like Lacan's "objet petit a" Again the musical results have an abundance of interest, each timbre finely interwoven, Piccolo,Clarinet,Horn, Violin and Cello.All as soloists independent of each other yet mindful of the space it inhabits, or will inhabit in the future;difficult blends at times and combinations to foster and to co-inhabit the frame.
"Incipits" features the Viola as soloist, a neglected instrument;Here beginning with wonderful tremoli on woodblocks with pizz viola and legato, again establishing a space.This piece is more understated.It works quite well within the quasi-concerti language.There is more uncertainty however which makes the work compelling,more opaque-ness here like the work doesn't know where it wants to go meandering wistfully into highly complex statements 'sotto voce' habitations but all again reiterate their materials together,not much independence is sought here.This is like Ferneyhough is painting now with larger brushes then the pencil-thin impeccable ones of previous days.There are also simply "mists" of timbres should we call them "noises", more background canvas, as in the Contrabass and Percussion that follows without freedom the main lines. The Viola admirably goes on with its lifeworld miniature fragments not really leading anyone anywheres.But it is a beautiful instrument with the plucked moments,alternating with legato atonal lines almost arbitrary.Barbara Mauer is wonderful as Violist here,great to hear someone besides the Arditti cadre perform this music.
There is also a one minute"String Trio" included here written for a friend A.Richards, a mere mist of gesture. Ensemble recherche are a committed bunch to this music and always bring a clarity and a search for an expressive center.

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Basic Wonderful Stuff, Early Middle and Late

Brian Ferneyhough
Ensemble SurPlus
Manufacturer: Zeitklang
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Brian Ferneyhough: Funérailles

ASIN: B000ICM2PG
Release Date: 2002-01-15

Product Description

Allgebrah/Lemma-Icon-Epigram/Coloratura/Incipits

Customer Reviews:

Basic Wonderful Stuff, Early Middle and Late.......2007-02-22

Two works here features the Oboe,not really a neglected timbre within modernist expressions.
"Coloratura" is very early Ferneyhough 1966, a mere 7 minute work; exposed of angular contrapuntal means here but the semi,"seeds" are here of the complex discourse the dialogue between the two instruments.Early Ferneyhough you find simply less materials,less extended techniques,someone trying to master a language. As all Ferneyhough it is not easy to play, and demands a committment. I had heard this at a Darmstadt course in the Eighties. As the other work now more mature, seasoned "Allgebrah" for Solo Oboe 4 Violins, 2 Violas, 2 Cellos and Contrabass, this is from the latter creative domain now with full tilt extended timbres, microtonal inflections, spit-fire tremoli,pizz,taps,flutting sul tasto, snapped against the fingerboard,all quite exciting.The nasal oboe sputters itself unimpaired, in fact you sense the oboe giving meaning to the nefarious strings.Solos in all to crop into the discourse. This was an Ensemble Intercontemporain commission. The playing here however is fine, this music now is commonplace with all the live performances available in Europe.

Likewise the piano solo "Lemmi-Icon Epigram", really Ferneyhough's first mature work for piano. It has a wonderful structure to it,(find it in his collected writings, and in Perspectives of New Music Mag)and moves in textures and registers also displaces different spatial dimensions as it moves along, none of the materials of gestural inflections return, it has an encapsulated Listzian flourish then to it with its impenetrable virtuosity,now a icon a trope within the Ferneyhough pallette.Thye opening cascade of thirty-second notes under an asymmetrical division is wonderful, but it never returns.Return is a dirty word within this context. There are multiple recordings of this, I prefer this one, exposing the a-matter-a-fact-nature of the work. You cannot render the lines with too much emotive power or the gesture is ruined,becomes marred from the work's constituted purity,like an out-of-focus kalidoscope. Like wise the chamber "Incipits" you will find recorded with the Ensemble Recherche, but here again the playing is fine, it is curious now with these multiple recordings if there is a probelmatics, if in fact Fernyhough's music can be "interpreted" and not merely played."Incipts" features the Viola in a solo role, where the instrumental brethren are slowly introduced with wonderful,thuds,claps from the percussion. Again the strings do not try to get in the way of the soloist. the chamber setting is also a strong prevalent trope for Ferneyhough, he sicceeds quite well at not employing to many layers, or too much material to burden the density of the ensemble.

Brian Ferneyhough: Fourth String Quartet; Kurze Schatten II; Trittico per g.s.; Terrain

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An excellent Ferneyhough compilation

Brian Ferneyhough: Fourth String Quartet; Kurze Schatten II; Trittico per g.s.; Terrain

Manufacturer: Disques Montaigne
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Brian Ferneyhough: Flurries; String Trio; In nomine a 3; Streichtrio; Incipits
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Music for Flute
Brian Ferneyhough: Funérailles
James Dillon: East 11 Street 10003 NYC

ASIN: B0000AKO6P
Release Date: 2003-11-18

Album Description

A critical synthesis of the works of the past, Brian Ferneyhough's post-modernism confronts new aesthetic challenges, in the alternation of reversed and dislocated movements of Quartet No. 4, in the shimmering surface of Kurze Schatten II, where the cast shadow vacillates under the strings of the guitar (in reference to a phrase of Walter Benjamin), or in Terrain, a virtual symphonic poem in the form of a violin concerto, bristling like the eruptive, chaotic geology of the landscape that inspired it, the "land art" of Robert Smithson.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent Ferneyhough compilation.......2003-11-19

Brian Ferneyhough, adopted father of the 'new complexity' movement, is often written of as one of the most significant composers of our time. However, comparatively few of his recent works are available on disc, so this reissue of pieces from the late 1980s and early 1990s is very welcome.

The Fourth String Quartet was written as a companion piece to Schoenberg's Second Quartet (the one with the soprano solo in the last two movements). Accordingly, this work also has a four-movement form and a solo soprano--though she sings in the second and fourth movements in this work. Stylistically, this quartet is largely similar to the two preceding quartets, though Ferneyhough has to some extent clarified his style, eliminating some excess detail without impairing expressivity. It is a very emotionally intense work--Schoenberg taken to the nth degree--and phenomenally virtuosic, particularly in the vocal line. Based on Jackson MacLow's deconstructions of Ezra Pound, the soprano part regularly falls apart into a hyper-Expressionist babble, which perfectly matches the overheated intensity of the string quartet writing. Towards the end, the solo voice has a long quasi-cadenza, before the strings rudely cut it off. This is an extreme work in almost every way--even within Ferneyhough's oeuvre--but I think a great one.

The rest of the disc is rather less intense, but still well worth hearing. Kurze Schatten II, a somewhat dry seven-movement suite for solo guitar, based on the writings of Walter Benjamin, explores the idea of approaching moments of revelation--without ever reaching them. Accordingly, the guitar starts off entirely microtonally tuned and gradually approaches normal tuning, but the work ends before this process is complete. Musically, the work is fractured, sudden bursts of activity being fragmented by fierce plucking where the strings slam off the guitar fingerboard.

Trittico per G. S., dedicated to the memory of Gertrude Stein, is written for solo double-bass. An expressive piece, with aggressive and dynamic writing that only occasionally falls into stasis, this is amongst the best works I have heard for this instrument.

The final work on the disc is a miniature concerto. Terrain is written for violin and wind octet (the instrumentation is intended to evoke Varese's Octandre--the first piece of 'modern' music that Ferneyhough heard). The violin plays almost continuously throughout, with extremely virtuoso writing for almost the whole work. After a long opening solo, the accompanying ensemble gradually enters, providing a more slow-moving landscape beneath which the violin's incessant scurrying flutters through. Towards the end, the violin's music is drawn more and more towards the orbit of the ensemble part, and the work is rounded off with a superb throwaway ending. If not quite the equal of the slightly earlier clarinet concerto La Chute D'Icare, this is still a significant achievement.

The performances on this disc are outstanding. Irvine Arditti (soloist in Terrain) and the Arditti Quartet (in the quartet) are tailor-made for this sort of music, and Brenda Mitchell's rendition of the solo part in the quartet is nothing short of phenomenal. The contributions of Magnus Andersson (in the guitar piece) and Stefano Scodanibbio (in the double bass one) should not be minimised either.

Brian Ferneyhough: Shadowtime
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Brian Ferneyhough: Shadowtime

Manufacturer: Nmc Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Tristan Murail: Gondwana; Désintégrations; Time and Again

ASIN: B000F6ZIGK
Release Date: 2006-04-25

Brian Ferneyhough: Funérailles
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good penumbral Ferneyhough

Brian Ferneyhough: Funérailles

Manufacturer: Stradivarius
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Octets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
Septets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
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Iannis Xenakis: Percussion Works

ASIN: B000GRUO6W
Release Date: 2006-09-12

Tracks:

Funerailles I For 7 Strings And Harp
Bone Alphabet For Percussion
Unsichtbare Farben For Violin
Funerailles II For 7 Strings And Harp

Album Description

Born in 1943, Brian Ferneyhough is a renowned British composer of mostly orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, and piano works that have been performed throughout the world. "A ceremony taking place behind a curtain or far away": thus Ferneyhough on the emotional setting for the two Funérailles composed between 1969 and 1980, although the title is deceptive because this music is not intended to be funereal in character, nor was the composer setting out to write anything programmatic. Rather, Ferneyhough appears bent on delving deeper into his compositional abilities and on discovering what he could do with sound material structured like a ritual, principally for the emotional response that it can draw. The Arditti Quartet enjoys a worldwide reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier twentieth century music. Several hundred string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by first violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974. Their extensive discography now features well over one hundred CDs.

Customer Reviews:

good penumbral Ferneyhough.......2007-02-18

Ferneyhough's oeuvre has reached the performative platitude where you can sort and compare different recordings of identical works. The Parisians Ensemble Intercontemporain has long devoted their efforts to Ferneyhough's interesting webs of complexities, more like white ice sheets adhering to a window pane.You can here them the firtst recording on Erato of theses works.The two "Funerallies" are to be separated during live performances to sort the relative readings of similar materials. The intrusions of the Harp helps sharply define the string constitution. Most of this string music is well crafted with a rich diverse array of extended timbres occuring in fairly close proximity. You merely become absorbed into the sound of all of it. The scaled down chamber strings as well (As writing this work for a complete string orchestra), was a useful choice in the interesting results Ferneyhough achieves herein. One cannot help but think of Listz equally a purveyor of timbral virtuosic complexity, and Ferneyhough's interest also in the penumbral, the "shadows" of the lifeworld as becoming but more a "passing" of live life or energies,movements,arrays into states of stasis. The overwhelming complexity now seems more and more commonplace, yet one needs to look at what it all means within Fernyhough's sub-texts often he pursues the visuals arts a poet and a text to trigger instrumental discourse.Still the pure virtuosity allowed is a freedom we can still hold within the liberal adminstered world.

Irving Arditti is no stranger to this music, long a committed devotee of the cause of the complex web of inter-turnings of rapid fire timbral transformations, transmogrifications. Here he is allowed to render his skills a first chair,solo not as leader of the quartet. And he does give a "third person" reading always I think.(His Cage is abysmal in the other direction) There is no point in becoming too enraptured over complexity because it then leads to dangerous romanticized realizations. Here the sheer spontanaeity, the rhythmic freedom is wonderful to experience, where every particle of timbre is heard under Arditti's hands.The title "Invisible Colours" gives also a "third person" content to the proceedings, as if the linear arrays, and lynes mean something that is not self-evident simply from hearing the work, a concept must be engaged always for this music, it is far too difficult simply to listen when therte are more interesting sub-texts alive and workable that gives the music its inherent meanings. We often complain that we cannot posit a meaning with post-modernities vagaries of concept, where the concpet does come first before a note is written. The concept the subjectivized unfetter hero of complexities cause is here. Likewise the heroic "Bone Alphabet, but a but more practical work for a working percussionist. The player is allowed to select the six instruments utilized. Steven Shick (see his wonderful book "The Percussionist's Art")has well written about this work and the work necessary to play it,absorb it, (take into one's soul)and memorize it. The results here are threadbare beauty,a thud, a cluck, a tap, very beautiful in an unpretencious way.This is simply not the case for all percussion solos if you care to survey the literature. You need allow the timbres to be free, and the rhythmic freedom here also helps set free the timbres from the "tyrant" meter.Although meter is indeed never let go, there is a quite strict agenda at work with irrational gradations of quintuplets set against triplets and oct-tuplets.One can listen to this forever.The contrapuntal conundrums quickly mount snowballs gentle into imperceptible arrays for contemplation from the lifeworld.Swabs of wonderful timbres are here yet slowly given over in gradations. This is the most interesting solo percussion piece in some time.

Brian Ferneyhough: La Chúte d'Icare; Superscriptio; Intermedio alla Ciaccona' etc. (Etudes Trancendantales; Mnemosyne)

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ferneyhough for beginners?
Great showcase of complexity and ferocious virtuosity

Brian Ferneyhough: La Chúte d'Icare; Superscriptio; Intermedio alla Ciaccona' etc. (Etudes Trancendantales; Mnemosyne)

Manufacturer: Etcetera
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

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Music for Flute
Brian Ferneyhough: Fourth String Quartet; Kurze Schatten II; Trittico per g.s.; Terrain

ASIN: B0000000OB
Release Date: 2000-08-14

Tracks:

La Chute D'Icare
Superscriptio
Intermedio Alla Ciaccona
Etudes Transcendantales: I
Etudes Transcendantales: II
Etudes Transcendantales: III
Etudes Transcendantales: IV
Etudes Transcendantales: V
Etudes Transcendantales: VI
Etudes Transcendantales: VII
Etudes Transcendantales: VIII
Etudes Transcendantales: IX
Mnemosyne

Amazon.com

Ferneyhough, an English composer, is the father figure of a movement in contemporary classical music called the New Complexity, and his music is a fascinating synthesis of the highest delicacy in instrumental writing with visceral fervor. The works on this disc are all excerpts from an immense cycle entitled Carceri d'Invenzione (Dungeons of Invention). The strongly drawn architectural features of the music, inspired by the series of etchings by Piranesi, are impressive; but it is the fragile, expressive textures that are finally most moving and memorable. --Joshua Cody

Customer Reviews:

ferneyhough for beginners?.......2002-01-01

This was my first experience of this composer, whose works I knew to be controversial, even notoriously so. Although I'd come to grips with some classics of serialism over the last few years, I still had some trepidation as I started the disc. What was it like? Interesting (that perhaps almost goes without saying)...thought provoking...but also often beautiful, as well as strange. La Chute d'Icare is actually a short clarinet concerto. The sound is like the sonic realisation of some fantastically imagined aviary, with the clarinet soloist the most glittering of all the birds. Messiaen never sounded much like birdsong to me, but this did. The soloist, also the dedicatee of the work, brilliantly plays a part that sounds well-nigh impossible for anyone else. Next on the disc are two solo works: one for piccolo (a feast of fluttertonguing, trills, runs, rapid changes of pitch and intensity.... another virtuouso display), then a second one for violin, played by Irvine Arditti. This "intermezzo" is a kind of deconstruction of violin sounds. Ferneyhough describes it as an ugly piece, but it didn't sound it to me, savage perhaps, but not really ugly. Next, the 9 movements of the "Etudes Trancendantales". This is another mysterious, even misleading, title, for the piece is actually a song cycle, with a fragmented text, sometimes broken up into individual syllables and noises, with varying instrumental accompaniments in the different movements. Imagine a sort of "Marteau sans Maitre" with 20 more years of development. The last piece (Mnemosyne, for bass flute and pre-recorded tape, which seems to consist mostly of flute sounds, on this disc played by the same player)is the Ferneyhough that any open-minded listener would surely enjoy hearing....at least once! Again, there is a range of virtuoso sounds from the live flute, with a slow, almost hypnotic background from the tape. Ferneyhough says that he wants the effect of music played underwater, like Debussy's "Engulfed Cathedral", and he surely achieves this. You've heard of "Water Music", now listen to "Underwater Music". The playing, so far as one can tell, is fantastically brilliant throughout the whole disc. Maybe there are better starting points for Ferneyhough's music, but this disc seemed a good one to me.

Great showcase of complexity and ferocious virtuosity.......1999-04-11

It's always heartening when a composer writes solo unaccompanied works. In a way it is a patrilinear legacy to foster succeeding generation of interpreters. Ferneyhough's music is an elitist affair, for musicians you need to devote a substantial part of your performing life to it. For us listeners there is no compromise here, why should there be? Ferneyhough's creativity has developed slowly over his career always searching for the next link in his vast labyrinth of musical procedures and processes.It has yielded a vigorous body of work with a devoted following. The "Superscriptio" is a piccolo solo, long a neglected instrument inhabiting the tippy-top of the sonoric field. Ferneyhough brings a fine sense of the natural purity of its sound traversing all its strident registers in a hightened display of rhythmic complexity. When we come violinist Irving Arditti we have a premiere interpreter of Ferneyhough and here the "Intermedio. . . " reveals an ugly virtuosity in all registers with fast clipped double stops, an anguished-like gestures. Arditti however has developed a distanced objectivity in anything he plays, as if his playing is a mere passive conduit for these coldly abstract musical structures . And finally the "Etudes Transcentales" we have full forces of the remarkable Nieuw Ensemble. Ferneyhough's innovations to my mind remain purely technical for he feels he needs to shape and share a dialogue with the past to find a frame for his work and expressive content His structural-global resolutions, the way a piece unfolds in time, are indeed commonplace. Frequently we find Ferneyhough resorting to traditional handling of his materials, simple contrasts,simple traversing of registers,relying on textural change to refocus. And the listening experience is all too often opaque and disorienting,like our emotive sensibilities must somehow cope with blizzards of ill-define materials. Here in the "Etudes Transcendantales"" we have an obvious reference to Listz,who was also a technical innovator who also resorted to a programmatic frame to contain his pianistic innovations. The texts here in the "Etudes" Songs 1,2, and 6 by Ernst Meister and others by Alrun Moll are all beside the point for it hardly matters if the text is heard. Couched in complex linear textures with continous linear movement in microtones, you become swept into the sheer complex power of this linear motion.The synergism which occurs in the marvelous counterpoint does not help to focus your hearing but disperses it. No image really emerges and Ferneyhough's linear technique is so refined so multi-directional that a programmatic element, as these texts, remains at a distance. The vocal atonal linear leapings doesn't help matters. This type of vocal writing (an historical affinity dating to Boulez's "Le Marteau. . . ") leaves the text by itself,words are not conveyed nor their images ,the voice is simply another instrument, not a conveyor but an accomplice in pitch linear purity.Ultimately this language of musical complexity is a relative one and within the force fields of postmodernity it is certainly a legitimate agenda for a creator to foster a musical language that will remain an exclusive creative enclave for some. The fact that this complexity will always appeal to a select few is commonplace and a sign that the ears as a perceptive organ haven't developed in its history. That is an historical perspective,not one which is created.

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Brian Ferneyhough 1

Manufacturer: Disques Montaigne
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Quartets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

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Brian Ferneyhough: Funérailles
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ASIN: B0000DETE4
Release Date: 1994-01-01

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Flutes Without Borders

Manufacturer: Musicaphon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00000DD6F
Release Date: 2000-09-09

Tracks:

Manic Psychosis
Dreisam-Nore
To Ask the Flutist
Cassandra's Dream Song
Atem-Lied FflSolo
Cadenza da Dimensioni III
Carceri d'Invenzione Ilc Fte und Zuspielband
Doloroso FflSolo
Vermont Counterpoint Fte und Zuspielband

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Distinguish three aspects: hard-to-play, hard-looking, and hard-sounding. So what are you *really* searching for?
some very fine music
A good survey of contemporary British piano music
perceptive,sensitive,astonishing piano playing

Tracts

Manufacturer: Nmc Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

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Kaikhosru Sorabji: 100 Transcendental Studies, Nos. 1-25

ASIN: B00005KAUX
Release Date: 2001-05-29

Tracks:

Lemma-Icon-Epigram - Brian Ferneyhough, Ian Pace
You Done Torn Your Playhouse Down
Llik. Rellik
Llik. Rellik
Topologies
Tract I
Tract II
Tract: Hypothesis
Tract: The Light Gleams an Instant
Tract: Lacunae
Tract: As Heard So Murmured

Customer Reviews:

Distinguish three aspects: hard-to-play, hard-looking, and hard-sounding. So what are you *really* searching for?.......2007-05-23

What you get is a burned (and not a commonly pressed!) disc, burnt on a printable CD-R with its CD label losing its ink face if a droplet of water gets lost on it, a generous 80:14 total time, and a satisfactorily detailed 11p-booklet incl portrait fotos of each of the six involved persons. There isnt much to say on the performance --Ian Pace's debut album-- itself since most of the tracks are first, world-premiere recordings for which you cannot find any comparatives. So all I can really comment on is the music itself whether it is good or why i like it. Well, let's take it this way: i bought this album because i was searching for the hardest, *the most difficult* piano solo of traditional pianism and traditional notation ever composed. Doing some research you will quickly find out that pieces written by composers affiliated with the New Complexity movement meet this criterium, writing notably more difficult pieces than, say, Barraqué, Jolivet, Sorabji, or Boulez, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Xenakis, or the 'New Virtuosity' (see KIRBY) American serial composers such as Babbitt, Martino, Sessions, Wuorinen, etc. Actually i was looking for the *most virtuoso* (or at least sounding like this!) piano piece and thought that both terms would lead to the same search result. This album proves that the most difficult is not equal to the most virtuoso nor virtuoso sounding, while it does prove that the most difficult is equal to *the most complex*. Wikipedia refers to an interview where the pianist states about Barrett's Tract, "It's one of the hardest piano pieces ever written, in a way I would describe as 'transcendental' - meaning a difficulty that lies on the very fringes of possibility. [...] All the other [transcendental] pieces [before-mentioned, composed by Barlow, Finnissy, W.Zimmermann; Bussotti, Stockhausen, Xenakis] pose great pianistic challenges, but not in that league of difficulty." and he must know it possessing an overwhelming active solo modern repertoire and being an expert in the most daring and venturesome piano literature of our times. Curious, I examined the sheet music of the almost legendary score Lemma-Icon-Epigram and of Tract before purchasing the disc. At first glance the Tract score does not look very frightening but at a closer look you will agree that the "much darker, intricate and tortuous counterpoint of Barrett [...] sometimes almost as if each finger requires a separate brain attached to it" (quoted from album introduction by Ian Pace) "is one of the most demanding piano works ever composed". However, to my ears, its sound effect is nugatory, i.e. the piece doesnt actually sound as hard as it is to play. In my opinion a pity, both for the listener and the hard-working performer! If you relate 'virtuosity', as I do, to open, bright virtuosity, brilliance, showiness, rapid-fire fingers and leaps, loudness, wildness, even banging, making full use of the entire keyboard and its resources, full textures and gorgeous piano sound masses, say to pieces such as Stravinsky's From Petrouchka or Kapustin's first 2 piano sonatas, then Tract is rather the opposite: slow, quiet, dark, lame, tame, and never sounding virtuoso. On the other hand, the score of Lemma-Icon-Epigramm by the leading figure within the New Complexity school (see wikipedia) Brian Ferneyhough does frighten at first glance, absolutely ferocious-looking in what is probably the craziest, wildest piano writing ever written (talking of traditional notation. Finnissy's extravagant, fearsome scores use some non-traditional notation so dont count in here)! And the sound?..compares well to any standard American serial piano composition with lean textures and uncoordinated, homophonic tinkling on the keyboard, i.e. the piece doesnt actually sound as hard as it looks. Please dont get me wrong, I dont really regret the purchase, but I would have preferred to have got a possibly more virtuoso *sounding* disc, for more listening enjoyment over a long time; this CD is more that type of albums which I treat as 'ah! interesting music, pretty neat, nice to have in my vast collection' but never get excited with and would put it in the remote corner of my shelf after giving it a max of 5-10 repeated hearings and then probably never again due to lack of genuine enjoyment, similar to the Stockhausen's Klavierstücke. A public audience at a recital would for sure never get enthused, thrilled nor even excited by a performance of pieces on 'Tracts', because the music, the sound isnt very exciting nor effective, and as commented earlier, never virtuoso sounding. But interesting.
To sum up, with this truely exotic album we finally have two superlatives represented: the *hardest-to-play* piano solo (Tract, 1996) ever written, and the *hardest-looking* piano score (Lemma-Icon-Epigramm, 1981) ever written. So I leave this review, this album, still in search of the most virtuoso piano solo, or better said, the *hardest-sounding* piano solo ever written..
Even if you dont agree with my opinions just expressed I hope you have found the review helpful for your intention to buy or not to buy.

some very fine music.......2005-02-21

The other reviewers have done fine jobs describing these works, so there isn't a whole lot for me to add, save that I found all of these works interesting, with Ferneyhough and Barrett being especially wonderful. The tremendous tremolos, trills, and repeated notes of Tract create a dark atmosphere, perhaps one of the most ominous pieces of piano music I have ever heard. Amazing stuff. Lemma-Icon-Epigram in contrast is delightful, very bright and virtuosic music. The other, shorter pieces are exciting and bright also. Ian Pace does an excellent job performing these scores, which must be seen (and attempted!) to be believed.

A good survey of contemporary British piano music.......2004-01-30

The British pianist Ian Pace is an increasingly important figure in the world of contemporary music. A strong advocate of the music of Michael Finnissy, he has also recently premiered new works by Walter Zimmermann, Pascal Dusapin, James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough and others. In this disc, he turns his attention to British composers, primarily those of the so-called new complexity school.

Brian Ferneyhough's Lemma-Icon-Epigram is already approaching minor classic status. This tripartite work evokes the poetic form of the Emblema (a superscription; an image; a concluding epigram that explains the preceding elements); Ferneyhough had been studying Walter Benjamin's essay on the topic. The Lemma section is a virtuoso torrent of single notes and, later, chordal writing; the Icon is slow and harmonically based; the Epigram gradually collapses the two preceding movements into the series of harmonies on which the whole work was based. This is the only one of the works on the disc for which a rival recording is available, and Massimiliano Damerini's recording on Piano XX, Volume 2 must be considered superior--there is more glitter in his treble playing and more virtuoso joy (the super-dry acoustic for Pace doesn't help matters).

James Erber's You Done Torn Your Playhouse down was a 50th birthday homage to Michael Finnissy, and accordingly it has a similar focus to some of Finnissy's music in the way that it plays with blues figurations within an atonal context. The left hand and right hand parts are sharply divided, and the music ends with a series of trills in the right hand that might remind some of the close of Finnissy's Sixth Piano Concerto.

Christopher Fox's lliK.relliK continues along from Erber's piece in its interest in popular music. The first movement attempts to evoke the physical energy of early rock'n'roll piano with its ferocious ostinato rhythms, the sheer energy of the writing helping to prevent it falling into banality; the second uses analogous techniques to those of techno music in its attempt to produce a remix of parts of the first. I find the first movement more sucessful than the second, whose Stravinskian rhythmic figures ultimately become rather blandly repetitive (I assume, though, that this was Fox's intention).

The Australian-based Chris Dench's Topologies (inspired by a Robbe-Grillet novel) is an early work, written in the composer's 20s. In it, two styles of music interweave and interpenetrate; long, fine-spun, constantly varying filigree alternates with and is finally subsumed by dense chordal writing before descending scalar passages trigger the disintegration of the material.

By far the longest work on this disc is Richard Barrett's diptych Tract. Pace describes this as one of the most difficult piano pieces ever written, and it certainly sounds that way. Tract 1 is dense, complex and vigorously polyphonic, an almost relentlessly complex toccata centred in the bass and alto regions of the keyboard. After a minute's silence, Tract 2 follows; where Tract 1 was a single monolithic section, Tract 2 contains five diverse, even fragmentary movements. In it, material from Tract 1 and from late Beethoven is jumbled up and reassembled, only for ominous silences to intrude, destroying all musical momentum. The final section acts as a sotto voce recapitulation--albeit highly compressed--of Tract 1, and ends with a gesture of futility as the pianist slams down the piano lid before the final sounds have died away.

This is a strong collection--the Ferneyhough and Barrett pieces are particularly fine--though it is likely to only appeal to fans of hypercomplex modernism (don't expect to find the minimalist tonality of a Howard Skempton here). Recommended, though if you only want the Ferneyhough you may find Damerini's recording a more enticing prospect.

perceptive,sensitive,astonishing piano playing.......2001-06-26

Many times music creativity needs someone with the perceptive performance imagination like Ian Pace to complete a compositional plan that,on paper seems cogent,yet when ushered into the real world it has abandoned itself.Left to the vagaries of expressionistic plurality,without a center,shattering its own vessels of perceived fortitude. Pace who has an incredible repertoire is one such pianist. As all good profound perfoming he plays a few feet past the works premise, to place it in a wonderful exciting context,usually quite objective. For this new music (dare I say The New Complexity, well it's all relative terms now), Pace is a wonderful player who places a needed air of objectivity between him and the work. You always sense here that his performances are monitors and conduits for something a dimension larger than the work itself,albeit profound ones,but ones that allow us to hear these unique piano works in a context. Brian Ferneyhough's Lemma-Icon-Epigram is one such work. Dedicated to Massimiliano Damerini,in June 1981. It was completed that month and astonishingly performed later within June at the Venice Biennale.I'd like to consider this if we can still refer to art objects as masterowrks, this is one. Although by comparison Damierini searches for the works outward,surface expressivity,rendering the work scary,phanthomized, whereas Pace allows the works complexity and beauty simply to exist,not overdetermining the works labryrinth of formations and structures, as the complex shapes of ice formations on a window pane. Ferneyhough,as a subtext for his music, keeps wonderful interface with European intellectual history,a place he often locates the creative agendas he utilizes. Here the title refers to a poetic form "Emblema" from the Italian poet Alciati during the first half of the sixtennth century. The work is a labyrinth one with modest dimensions,where the completed work is simply one realization of many, within Ferneyhough's oeuvre. Yet I'm always excited by the pure beauty of this work's density, the upper register filigree structures, like the very opening. I could listen to this stuff endlessly. But the creative agenda here is for a music constantly changing,the separation of surface and substructure(that is the Lemma section)the filigrees, shifting priorities, and materials that transmogrify into evolutional structures. Icon is chordal formations,quite short in duration. The beauty here is the work knows the limits, the thresholds of temporal tolerance,how many events can be packed into given musical moments. The Erber work has,springs more the immediate dimensions in mind, its marcato hardedge attacks in the opening here, almost digging ones fingers. There is an agenda it seems for oppositional discourse between upper and lower regions. The gesture of this music seems to be argumentative,unarticulated interrogatories,as one shouting continuously without elliptical moments,to give structural relief. There is no call and response. The effect/affect is quite menacing.

Christopher Fox by contrast seems to be more playful within this context,with his repeated figures,bouncing along,also quite immediate with an air of the popular strain here, almost like borrowed objects retransformed,filtered from the Rock World. There is also suggestions of dance,gypsy with simple rhythmic displacements of two/three. Yet Fox seems to be at the center of this discourse,something keeps this nefarious materials from collapsing into nothingness of postmodernity more vacuious ends,in that I found the work compelling. The Dench was more the music we've already seen/heard,something the mind already knows, as Jasper Johns once quipped, spatial utilization of the entire keyboard canvas, very fragmented "moments musical",shifting textures which is what makes fragmentation work,evolutional with cascades in the upper registers at times. This is always an arresting effect. But I found no agenda at work here, no underlying philosophy,an aesthetic center, a worldview.How does one invest the objectivized sense of time with form articulating interreferential levels?I found No declamation within a force field.Perhaps I've missed the music,gone out over my cognitive perceptive discourse.

Barrett I found compelling, here it seems he allowed his own music,his materials to direct him, the somatic quality was at work here,the music came from inside,no predetermined structural formations directing the works agenda. Again high density is what interests these folks,without sequential ordering the music seems quite free,improvised, yet with an air of jocularity, fun, of desire in a Lacanian perspective.Nothing quite obvious, again all relative.At work was surface phenonmenons,unarticulated labyrinths,quite interesting to hear.Barrett seems to be at the center and guides the music through an intense fury of moments. This approximately half an hour work breaks into self-contained movements; the Third more reflective, dare I say impressionistic,in its floating demeanor,And the Fourth we return again to the tinkling forever never World of the Upper register filigreed moments, with high levels of density of encrusted continuously moving notes.

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