New Ear Candy

Esa-Pekka Salonen: Saxophone Concerto, Mimo II, et al.

I have long admired the music of Mr. Salonen and am quite delighted that he's retiring from conducting to compose more. By the by, for those that don't know, Salonen is NOT a conductor/composer, he's a composer/conductor. HUGE difference.

Rautavaara: Orchestral Songs

This is the 15th Einojuhani Rautavaara recording in my collection. His music is unbelievable. It’s neo-tonal with that cool Nordic approach to Romanticism descended from Sibelius and Nielsen. You'll find neither sappy American neo-Romanticism nor icy central European music here. This disc is full of songs originally written for voice and piano that were subsequently orchestrated (except for three excerpts from his opera Aleksis Kivi, about the Finnish writer and poet).

Lou Harrison: Concerto for Pipa and Strings

The Symphony is performing Harrison's concerto next season. It's terrific. It exudes beautiful melody throughout and just simply dances.

John Luther Adams: The Far Country

“The Other” John Adams composes some of the most beautiful soundscapes around. This is music rich in color and texture and evocative of Adams’ native Alaska.

Philip Glass: 600 Lines, How Now

Early Glass works that have never been released commercially. The Italian contemporary music group Alter Ego performs Glass' 600 Lines, which is 40 minutes of some of the tightest unison ensemble playing you'll ever hear and How Now is 20 minutes of pure bliss.

Paul Dresher: Cage Machine, Dark Blue Circumstance

Paul Dresher is a New York composer that just came into my musical field of vision relatively recently. What I’ve heard so far is terrific. It’s music that has its roots firmly planted in the musical language of rock and postminimalism. Cage Machine is his concerto for violin and electro-acoustic band. It’s an interesting mix in which the first movement calls to mind the musical machinations of Stravinsky while the second seems to evoke the more organic developments of the great works of Sibelius (the mechanic and the gardener, respectively). Dark Blue Circumstance is a great disc of works that highlights the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. The ensemble is respectively comprised of violin-piano-percussion and several of the works include additional players. Awesome!

And finally the pièce de résistance:

Ligeti: Clear or Cloudy (Complete Deutsche Grammophon Recordings)

This collection of masterpieces was put together by DG (for the ridiculously low price of $31.99) last November and comprises – as the title would suggest – everything of Ligeti's recorded on their label. No small amount of stuff. When we’re far enough away from it that the history of music in the 20th century can be written with some sort of accuracy I can’t help but think that György Ligeti will be seen as one of the most gifted and influential of post-WWII music inventors. In the meantime we get amazing recordings of even more amazing works.

It looks as though I have my ears full for a while.