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| The baffling range revealed in the creative work of Iannis Xenakis has one fixed point so characteristic of his music: it is deeply rooted in the myths of the Greek and in other archaic structures. Despite the mathematically constructed structures of his pieces, his music always retains its authentic, earthy originality. Procession aux eaux claires, the first part of the Anastenaria, originally intended to be tripartite, is concerned with processions of various priests and members of their village communities who recite prayers together and perform certain rites. The second part, which portrays the blessing of the holy bulls, however, is not followed by a musical rendition of the climactic event of the ritual, the sacrifice of the beasts. This omission is intentional. Xenakis chose an entirely different piece, Metastaseis, as the end of the cycle, “because,” as he once said, “it was such a great [compositional] step forward.” In his trombone concerto Troorkh, Xenakis mostly uses glissandi and particular intervals, with the quint and tritone being used most often. Aïs, the last piece on the present recording, forcefully traces original Greek mythology in texts by Homer and Sappho. |
1CD | Contemporary | BR musica viva |
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| Recommendation |
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The crack in the groove of a record, a VCR whose pause function does not work and voices of demons from the Middle Ages: Bernhard Lang’s DW 8, DW 3 und DW 15  |
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| Pax Questuosa (1982) vividly tells “of the vicarious suffering for peace, which, while broken again and again, remains our only hope.” |
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| In 1951, after numerous solo compositions, Cage tried his hand at a piano concerto, naturally for the prepared variety. And in marked contrast to the concerto: Sixty-Eight. |
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