Other than the Venables album (see last post) NMC have just released a programme of music by Brian Ferneyhough performed by Exaudi and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The title work, La Terre est un Homme, an epic and densely written work for 88 instruments, is worth the price of the disk alone. It caused something of scandal at its premiere in Glasgow in 1979, and was subsequently rarely played. Martyn Brabbins’ performance is brutally exciting and does a remarkable job of making sense of the dense polyphonic writing (the score is 4 feet tall…).
If this is a little intense, why not try out Magnar Åm’s The Broken Vessel on Ravello Records, a series of compositions/improvisations in an abandoned Norwegian factory that makes use of ‘everything from the acoustics in the building to the muffled sounds of traffic outside its walls.’ The results are surprisingly evocative, as if the vibrations of the instruments are giving voice to the old building.
More Zen still, if you’re in the mood for cosmic length, is Morton Feldman’s For John Cage for violin and piano in a new release that forms volume 6 in Bridge Records’ Feldman series. Typical of late Feldman, the work is massively spun out, with small, seemingly inconsequential, musical ideas (most of which barely rise above a whisper) explored over its 70 minute timeframe. Even so, it casts quite a spell, especially when performed, as here, with the requisite concentration.