Unfortunately, I have a lot more urgent things to do than update Postclassic Radio, but I did manage to give it a long overdue facelift today, and will continue. I acceded to listener demand by adding some of the out-of-print vinyl I’ve been transferring to disc, including the following:
Morton Feldman: Piece for Four Pianos
Per Nørgård: Spell
Per Nørgård: Gilgamesh, side one
Pauline Oliveros: Horse Sings from Cloud
Pauline Oliveros: The Well and the Gentle (excerpts)
Henri Pousseur: Trois Visages de Liège
Stefan Wolpe: Form IV: Broken Sequences (postclassical? dunno, but I love it)
It finally dawned on me that I have greatly neglected Jon Gibson, and I’ve been remembering how beautiful his early music is, so I’ve added a lot of that, along with some Lou Harrison (from Tony DeMare’s piano album), Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Paul Epstein, David Borden, and a blues, played by Jon Gibson, by one of the earliest minimalists, Terry Jennings. Golden stuff.
Were it not Postclassic Radio, I would also treat you to Franz Schmidt’s silken Piano Quintet in G Major, written in 1926 for the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. It’s such a delight to discover it again.
Yes, Form IV is outstanding. I also have it on LP and recently transferred it to my computer and iPod. And I’m looking forward to the Jon Gibson stuff—all I have is Untitled and Cycles, but have heard other works in concert and was very impressed.
now that you mention Jennings, I’ll admit that the article I’m most interested in reading from your VV archive is the ‘Les Tapes Perdu’ about Maxfield, Jennings and MacLise.
The only Jennings I’ve heard is the one brief duet with Charlotte Moorman available on Ubuweb, but that’s enough to confirm his sizable reputation and lets me know that I need to hear more. I know most of these tapes are sitting in the MELA archives and unlikely to see the light of day any time soon, but if you’ve heard any of them, I’m definitely one of the people who’s curious in reading as much about them as possible to tide me over until an official release. (One of these decades.)
Perhaps further written attention given to these tapes might push along a release before they all finish demagnetizing. Then again, I hear it’s a crazy situation, so perhaps it won’t, but I’m still curious about the music.
FWIW, the Pousseur has been issued on CD at least twice, once on the Bvhaast Acousmatrix CD devoted to Pousseur, and once on the Sony (Japan) reissue of the famous Columbia New Electronic Music LP that also includes Babbitt’s Ensembles and Cage’s Variations II.
KG replies: Thanks, glad to know it. I get tempted to get on the internet and see how many of these vinyl recordings could be repurchased as CDs, but there go my life savings pretty quick.