I think it's a stunning performance, beautifully recorded (but I generally favour close recording). For me and largely for that reason - if you must limit yourself to only one recording of a Xenakis piece  - it has the edge on Kroumata and Strasbourg. There really isn't much to say about the relative merits of these performances: it's the kind of piece that you either take with the requisite seriousness and commitment or not at all.

There are some free Xenakis FLAC downloads here, from which I'd principally recommend the astonishing Cendrées for chorus and orchestra, which hasn't (yet?) appeared in Tamayo's series.

Well, in a sense, it was indeed the first to be spun, but only so far in order to rip it, then edit out the fades and added reverb at the end of most of the Parts. I have now resampled them to 48/16 and have just finished burning them to DVD-R. However, it's now time for bed. You will have to wait. Meantime I have had the Schubert, Mosolov and Varese spinning in order to listen. Good to hear an arpeggione again, and the 1933 recording of Zavod was fascinating. Unfortunately, the RCA recording of Arcana has a very strange perspective, with someof the percussion instruments right in our face, while the rest of the orchestra seems to be way at the back of the hall.

A faithful reproduction of the original LP release (a Dynagroove IIRC) then, Bryn - heavily spotlit percussion was definitely a feature, while some important orchestral details were all but inaudible.

Absolutely. Xenakis performance clearly is finally reaching a stage where it's possible to have two ongoing series of works (Mode and Timpani), both almost uniformly of very good performances. In many senses, an 'adequate' performance of Xenakis is only really subtly different from a 'great' performance of Xenakis, but when the latter occurs it is somehow a profoundly moving, mind-altering experience.

Evan: the 30" iTunes store snippet of Metastasis from vol. 5 (I haven't heard the full thing either...) makes me suspect that there might finally be a successor to the Rosbaud performance.

Maybe not, Richard. I do not have the score, nor have i ever seen it. A comment in the booklet notes implies that some Parts are not intended to follow seamlessly from the immediately preceding Part. I will try another rip, keeping the 'tracking' as on the CDs. The keyboards certainly don't have the punch of the Farfisas, but there is some good sax and flute. The voices I find less attractive than in the 1975 recording of Part 1 through 6, too. I am finding it interesting to listen to, but it is certainly something of a Curate's egg. Being from 'live' also means some rather untidy breathing point in the repetitions in the wind instruments and voices.

I think I was aware that there are gaps between some Parts (2 and 3 for example, if I recall correctly). It was your reference to fades and added reverb I found offputting. As far as the keyboards are concerned, I'm also aware that there aren't that many Farfisas around in reliable playing condition these days so replacements need to be found, but I remember a performance of Four Organs, which was originally played on the same kind of instrument as Glass's 1960s and 70s music, in London back in the 80s (with the composer present) in which DX7s had been programmed by Glyn Perrin to sound so "authentic" that it was hard to tell the difference. It must be possible twenty years later to do something like that far more easily. Presumably Glass either doesn't care or has decided he likes the more "synthetic" sound the keyboards in his pieces have tended to have for some time.

I suppose I shall have to wait until Roger Norrington gets around to performing Music in Twelve Parts.

I seem to have given up on barlines altogether at the moment (mind you I am dealing with a solo work at the moment and the next piece will be so minimalist and pared down that it doesn't actually need the barlines). After seven years or so thinking of barlines as rather like a Ferneyhoughian (Piranesi/Bacon period) cage (not Cage), it's a bit like letting my music air in the breeze for a while.


Now that's a piece I think I quite like though I can't remember what it sounds like. (Having first read about it before hearing it, it's one of those works that may be more interesting in my head than in my ears and I'm suddenly struck by a doubt that I've heard it at all...)


I'm teaching a course on 20th century performance practice and although this isn't on the syllabus, I think that it's well worth a mention. Are there other works that depend on synthesisers that have been 'improved' beyond the sound that the composer (seems to have) originally intended?