“That Which is Not”, by Wim Mertens. The Belgian composer, pianist and countertenor is now sixty-five years old and, at the end of 2019, he will celebrate forty years since the recording of his first album, For Amusement Only (Les Disques du Crépuscule, 1982), recorded with Gust De Meyer under…

“Urban Season”, by Timespine. The Portuguese trio Timespine was founded in 2013 by three musicians from different backgrounds: Adriana Sá (zither and electronics), John Klima (electric bass) and Tó Trips (dobro and percussion), and debuted with an album of the same name. Five years later, fully established in Portugal as…

“A Different Forest”, by Hauschka. Until the mid-1990s, Volker Bertelmann (Kreuztal, 1966) played keyboards in a German hip-hop group called God’s Favourite Dog. The new century brought him to us as an experimental piano composer – familiar with the Cagean technique of prepared piano – called Hauschka – a tribute…

“À Quia • Aufgang…”, de Pascal Dusapin. One of the great French composers between the 20th and 21st centuries, Dusapin (Nancy, 1955) belongs to that generation that discovered jazz and the Doors before classical music. But when, at the age of 18, he heard Edgar Varese’s Arcana, his life was…

“Arche”, by Jörg Widmann. The Elbe Philharmonic, Hamburg’s spectacular concert hall designed by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, was inaugurated in January 2017. One of the venue’s several inaugural concerts was commissioned to composer Jörg Widmann (Munich, 1973), who created an oratorio inspired by what, for Widmann,…

“Erinnerungsspuren”, by Alberto Posadas. The composer Alberto Posadas (Valladolid, 1967), winner of the 2011 National Music Prize for composition, is one of the few Spanish composers at the forefront of European composition. A student of Francisco Guerrero, he is a structurally rigorous, very “mathematical” and “architectural” composer. The album now…

“Fallen Trees”, by Lubomyr Melnyk. The Canadian pianist and composer (although of Ukrainian origin and born in Munich in 1948) Lubomyr Melnyk is known for his piano technique of “continuous music”, which he achieves with extremely fast notes and the use of the pedal to generate overtones and resonances. He…

“Pillars”, by Tyshawn Sorey. Black American composer Tyshawn Sorey (Newark, 1980) has outdone himself. Known as a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, his classical and jazz training also make him a solid improvisational composer, and this ambitious work (a four-hour triptych for octet) marks a major step forward in his creation. Based on…

«Songs and Structures», de Harold Meltzer. Short-listed for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music (won by Steve Reich with Double Sextet), the American Harold Meltzer (New York, 1966) is one of the most pronounced musical personalities of his generation. This recording is made up of sixteen recent pieces, both vocal…

“Structures of Light and Spruce”, by Malin Bång. Swedish composer Malin Bång (Sävedalen, 1974) is one of the most powerful personalities on the international experimental scene today. In 2003 she founded the chamber orchestra Curious Chamber Players, which works both with conventional instruments and with amplified found objects and modified…

“Again and Again”, by Company of Music. The Little Match Girl is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s most famous (and sad) fairy tales and the starting point for Little Match Girl Passion, one of the most acclaimed musical works by the American composer David Lang (Los Angeles, 1957), co-founder of Bang on a Can,…