Iannis Xenakis News
Greek-French composer, architect and engineer (1922–2001)
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- contemporary classical music, electronic music
- Greece, France
- composer, architect, engineer, music teacher, musician, poet
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2024-03-26
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2024-03-21 10:56:00
For young classical audiences the sound is the message
[…] chunks that can be swallowed without chewing. Music must be easy to listen to: preferably film music or any mainstream work that sounds like film music. Music cannot speak for itself, it has to be 'explained' by a presenter reciting chunks from a children's encyclopaedia of music, a travesty that is now creeping by osmosis into the concert hall. And, above all, music cannot contain any sounds that are not comforting. So no primetime for Xenakis' gamma rhythm-rich Pléïades. In my header image Pléïades is seen being performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg - video via this link. There are two steps to solving a problem. The first step is to accurately identify and understand the problem. The second step is to create a solution. For several decades in its search for a new younger audience classical music has been trying to solve the wrong problem. Putting the music through a programmatic blender to […]
2023-12-31 16:56:00
[…] Beethoven, Berberian, Berio, Boismortier, Boulez, Busoni, Cage, Chausson, Cherubini, Unsuk Chin, Coleridge-Taylor, Crumb, Duparc, Elgar, Fauré, Francesco Filidei, Grisey, Saed Haddad, Hartmann, Hindemith, Holliger, Humperdinck, Ibert, Janáček, Korngold, Kurtág, Márton Illés, Jolas, Sigurd von Koch, Lachenmann, Edward Lambert, Manoury, Martinů, Messiaen, Mompou, Mussorgsky, Elizabeth Ogonek, Poulenc, Purcell, Rachmaninov, Reger, Reimann, Rossini, Saariaho, Saint-Saëns, Scarlatti, Schmidt, Schoeck, Schnittke, Schoenberg, Schulhoff, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Scriabin, Sweelinck, Tchaikovsky, Telemann, Tippett, Ustolvskaja, Varèse, Vivaldi, Wagner, Weelkes, Weill, Widmann, Wolf, Xenakis, Zimmermann
2023-09-27 06:37:00
Drinking the stars: Mary Dullea plays the piano music of John McLachlan
John McLachlan: Drinking the stars; Mary Dullea; Farpoint RecordingsUncompromising perhaps, occasionally stark but always vivid and arresting, a survey of the Irish composer John McLachlan's piano music from the last 30 years in stunning performances from Mary DulleaThe Irish composer John McLachlan was born in Dublin and studied music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and Trinity College Dublin, and studied composition with William York, Robert Hanson and Kevin Volans. It is perhaps relevant to his own compositional style that for his PhD in musicology from Trinity College Dublin, he specialised in researching the compositional techniques of Boulez, Xenakis, Lutoslawski and Carter.This new disc, Drinking the stars: Mary Dullea plays the piano music of John McLachlan on Farpoint Recordings, features two discs (a total of over two hours music) with Mary Dullea performing a range of McLachlan's piano music from almost the last 30 years. Whilst the majority of pieces are from the last […]
2023-09-15 21:04:00
Musikfest Berlin (4) – Gerhaher/BPO/Petrenko: Xenakis, Illés, Hartmann, and Kurtág, 14 September 2023
Philharmonie Xenakis: Jonchaies Márton Illés: Lég-szín-tér (world premiere) Hartmann: Gesangsszene Kurtág: Stele Christian Gerhaher (baritone)Berlin Philharmonic OrchestraKirill Petrenko (conductor)Now this is what I call a programme. To have Xenakis and Kurtág on the same programme from the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was extraordinary enough, yet together with a new piece from Márton Illés and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s final work, the latter involving Christian Gerhaher as soloist, this would surely have been the envy of any hall and audience in the world; it certainly should have been. Iannis Xenakis’s Jonchaies, premiered in 1977 by the Orchestre National de France and Michel Tabachnik, may have been receiving its first performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, but it was a performance of security, commitment, and understanding belying any local novelty. The upward string sweep, not the last arresting string opening of the evening, sounded as if an aural concrete sculpture, turned by a giant butterknife. […]
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