Warp Works And Twentieth Century Masters

Amazing collection of modern classical. 2 CDs of Reich, Cage, Stockhausen, Ligeti, et al. killer Aphex Twin tracks too. Modern classical at its best. Beautiful pieces for prepared piano, weird orchestrations, avant-garde masterpieces. By track 5 on CD1 I’m in tears. Extremely alive music, at times delicate, at times horrific, always great. Dig in, enjoy, play any of these, multiple times :). Some tracks end early, some start soft, and a few have clapping at the beginning and/or end.

CD1:
*1 & 2. Slow beautiful jangly prepared piano.
*3. Wow, a Conlon Nancarrow player piano piece arranged for ensemble – funky orchestration – loooove the piano, trumpet, and bell lines together – crazy.
*4. Prep. piano - sparsest Cage track here. Phenomenal placement of silence.
5. Repeating, intertwining violins. Hypnotic. Orgasmic out-of-phaseness in the middle.
6. Brake drums, water gongs and anvils. Awe-inspiring rhythmic spacing.
7. Jazzy. Erie, almost industrial sounding.
8. Quiet, minimal, spacey, droney. The score for this is cool – basically the musician(s) plays shortwave radio and jams off it in various ways. There are some markers and guidelines, but it’s sorta like a Zorn game piece.

CD2:
1. Mid-tempo prepared piano. Delicate, almost like a music box. Would go well with Toychestra or Margaret Lang Tan.
2. Varese’s famous percussion piece. 37 percussion instruments and two sirens. The first time a siren was used in a composition?
3. Mid-fast, 6 marimbas – oh how I’d love to watch this done live.
4. Horror music for a cave scene.
5. The most up-tempo of the Cage prep. piano pieces here. Playful. Like a much less anal Ravel :)
6. Up-tempo dark orchestral. Funky percussion, string slicing. Nice muted trumpets.
7-8. Nail-biting Ligeti orchestral. Quiet.
*9. Same piece but more pizzicato and Chinese-water-torture repeated notes (yeah!).
10. Last and most active movement of the Ligeti piece.
*11. A more rockin’ piece to end the compilation. Zany marimba and violin, heavy on the bass drum and other percussion. Lots of changes. Clapping at start and end.