Episodes
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Witold Lutoslawski's Jeux Venitiens
Conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen celebrates the music of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski and his landmark work from the early 1960s, Jeux Venitiens. Writer Paul Griffiths explains how the composer used chance within the score to create rhythmic complexity; and we hear from Lutoslawski...
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Bernhard Lang's Differenz/Wiederholung 2
Composer Matthew Shlomowitz makes the case for Austrian composer Bernhard Lang’s Differenz/Wiederholung 2, a setting of texts by Gilles Deleuze, William Burroughs and Christian Loidl. Commentator Graham McKenzie highlights the jagged soundworld of this music, and the composer’s use of repetition.
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Eliane Radigue's Songs of Milarepa
Author and journalist Rob Young nominates French composer Eliane Radigue's Songs of Milarepa, which combines drone-like electronics with the voices of Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Robert Ashley singing and reading the words of the 11th-century Tibetan Buddhist poet Jetsun Milarepa. With commentary…
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Heiner Goebbels's Surrogate Cities
Hear and Now presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch celebrates the music of German composer Heiner Goebbels, focusing on the Suite for Sampler and Orchestra from his 1994 cycle Surrogate Cities. Commentary comes from Graham McKenzie of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and we also hear the voice...
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Gerard Grisey's Partiels
Composer Julian Anderson singles out Partiels for orchestra, from French spectralist Gerard Grisey’s cycle of works Les Espaces Acoustiques. With commentary from writer Paul Griffiths.
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Igor Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles
Composer John Woolrich nominates Stravinsky's last completed work with orchestra, Requiem Canticles. Commentator Paul Griffiths explains how this sparsely scored "pocket requiem", written in 1966 in a modern serial style, contains many of the hallmarks of his very earliest pieces.
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Per Norgard's Symphony No.2
Novelist and critic Philip Hensher makes the case for Per Norgard's Symphony No.2, one of the first works in which the Danish composer used his own 'infinity series' to determine melody and form. With commentary from Paul Griffiths.
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John Zorn's Carny
Critic and Hear and Now presenter Tom Service nominates American composer John Zorn’s Carny, a work for solo piano from 1989. The piece assembles a wide range of musical quotations and genres, juxtaposing Stockhausen and Bartok with cartoon music and boogie woogie. Author and journalist Rob Young...
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Jean Barraque's Chant apres chant
Pianist Nicolas Hodges nominates Jean Barraque's Chant apres chant, one of just a handful of surviving works by this contemporary of Boulez and Stockhausen whose death in 1973 at the age of 45 robbed the contemporary music world of one of its most innovative and deeply expressive voices. With...
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Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room
Sound artist Kaffe Matthews on Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room and how it’s provided an inspiration for her own work in the field of site specific music; David Toop explains how the piece explores both the acoustic properties of enclosed spaces and the complexities of the human voice; and…
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Gyorgy Kurtag's Officium Breve
Critic and Hear and Now presenter Ivan Hewett nominates Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag's Officium Breve in memoriam Andreae Szervanszky for string quartet. With commentary from writer Paul Griffiths.
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Terry Riley's In C
Singer and conductor Paul Hillier celebrates Terry Riley’s icon of musical minimalism and monument to the experimental atmosphere of 60s West Coast America, In C. With commentary from Richard Bernas.
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Pauline Oliveros's V of IV
Composer and Hear and Now presenter Robert Worby singles out V of IV, an early electronic work by American pioneer Pauline Oliveros; author and journalist Rob Young provides the background to this period of her work, and we also hear from the composer herself.
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Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Gavin Bryars's mould-breaking 1971 score Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a work which came about almost accidentally, when Bryars found a recording of an elderly homeless man singing lines from a Victorian hymn. Cultural historian Robert Hewison makes the case for why the work is important…
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Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the Moon
Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden explains why Silver Apples of the Moon by the American composer Morton Subotnick stands out for him as a classic of early electronic music. Author and journalist Rob Young provides some background to the work, which was created on a Buchla synthesizer at the San Francisco...
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Giacinto Scelsi's Ygghur
Cellist Frances-Marie Uitti celebrates the music of Giacinto Scelsi, the Italian composer from an aristocratic background whose work looks to the East for inspiration. Ygghur is Sanskrit for catharsis and is the final part of Scelsi's autobiographical La Trilogia. With commentary from Paul...
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Helmut Lachenmann's Mouvement
Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard champions the music of maverick German composer Helmut Lachenmann and his 1980s work for ensemble Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung); conductor Richard Bernas explains how the use of unconventional playing techniques created a rich and highly crafted soundworld the...
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Michael Nyman's The Draughtsman's Contract
Violinist Alexander Balanescu recounts his part in Michael Nyman's groundbreaking score for Peter Greenaway's 1982 feature film The Draughtsman's Contract; while commentator Gillian Moore links Nyman's work to the British experimental music tradition.
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Hans Abrahamsen's Winternacht
Author Paul Griffiths singles out this early work for ensemble by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen, a sonic evocation of nature which takes its name from a poem by Georg Trakl; Gillian Moore highlights some of the other influences at work, including the pictures of M.C. Escher, one of the piece’s...
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Claude Vivier's Lonely Child
The soprano Barbara Hannigan celebrates Claude Vivier’s profoundly moving work for soprano and orchestra, Lonely Child. Vivier conceived the piece as one single melody, with the entire orchestra "transformed into a timbre", to create "great beams of colour". Writer Paul Griffiths explains how...
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Galina Ustvolskaya's Octet
Composer and writer Gerard McBurney nominates the austere and uncompromising Octet by Galina Ustvolskaya, which changed his ideas of modern Russian music; and Gillian Moore highlights the intensity of this work, completed in 1950, in the shadow of the Soviet Zhdanov decree.
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Harrison Birtwistle's The Triumph of Time
Pianist Joanna MacGregor celebrates Harrison Birtwistle’s The Triumph of Time, an orchestral work she describes as “sculpted, dream-like and mesmeric”; Paul Griffiths remembers the London premiere and how it marked a new departure for the composer, and Birtwistle himself reflects on the subject…
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Kevin Volans's White Man Sleeps
Choreographer Siobhan Davies nominates White Man Sleeps by the South African-born composer Kevin Volans, and describes the experience of her collaboration with the composer; writer Paul Griffiths puts the work in the context of Cologne in the late 1970s; and Volans himself explains how he set out...
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George Benjamin's At First Light
Gillian Moore champions George Benjamin’s early orchestral score At First Light, praising its “extraordinary detail and skill”; while writer and critic Paul Griffiths assesses the significance of the work for British composing in the 1980s.
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Olivier Messiaen's Chronochromie
Composer George Benjamin advocates the "exuberant, thrilling and virtuosic" orchestral piece Chronochromie by his former teacher, Olivier Messiaen; while Paul Griffiths describes the significance of this work in the European avant-garde scene of the 1960s.
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Schaeffer & Henry's Symphonie pour un homme seul
Hollywood sound designer and film editor Walter Murch nominates Symphonie pour un homme seul by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, music he first heard on the radio as a schoolboy and which influenced his subsequent work in the field of film sound. Author and journalist Rob Young puts the work in...
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Philip Glass's Music in Twelve Parts
Composer Nico Muhly nominates Philip Glass's Music in Twelve Parts, a large-scale set of pieces for electric organs, voice, flutes and saxophones which is considered to be an early masterpiece of the New York minimalist. Gillian Moore puts the work in context and suggests how this numerical…
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Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King
Writer and critic Paul Driver explains why Maxwell Davies’s 8 Songs For A Mad King is so uniquely important in the development of music theatre; and the Viennese composer and chansonnier HK Gruber describes the work from the inside, as a performer who has sung the taxing part of the King many times.
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George Crumb's Black Angels
Violinist David Harrington celebrates George Crumb's groundbreaking 1970 work for electric string quartet, Black Angels - the work which inspired him to form the Kronos Quartet. Gillian Moore puts the piece in context, as a work full of dark foreboding and extreme sounds, in direct reaction to…
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Gerald Barry's Piano Quartet No.1
Composer Anna Meredith nominates Gerald Barry's "bold and daring" Piano Quartet No.1, with commentary from an established interpreter of Barry's music, conductor Richard Baker.
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Toru Takemitsu's Kwaidan
Writer and musician David Toop celebrates Toru Takemitsu's soundtrack for Masaki Kobayashi's 1964 chiller Kwaidan, based on Lefcadio Hearn's retelling of Japanese ghost stories; film scholar Peter Grilli describes how the composer worked closely with the director and recording technicians to…
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Luigi Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore
Theatre director Katie Mitchell describes her first encounter with the music of Italian composer Luigi Nono and her subsequent staging of Al gran sole carico d'amore, an operatic work which interweaves stories from the 1871 Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution. Conductor Richard Bernas...
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Milton Babbitt's Philomel
Jazz pianist Ethan Iverson nominates Milton Babbitt's Philomel for soprano and tape, "a classic record that should be owned by all fans of the avant-garde"; Paul Griffiths explains how Babbitt used the timbral and rhythmic resources of the Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer to help realise his own…
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Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco
Film director Barrie Gavin selects Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, an electroacoustic piece made from the sound of the largest bell at Winchester Cathedral and the voice of the composer's chorister son. Commentator Gillian Moore describes how Harvey used technology at IRCAM in Paris...
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Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen
Finnish conductor and music director of Ensemble InterContemporain Susanna Malkki pays tribute to Stockhausen's 1950s masterpiece Gruppen for 3 orchestras, and highlights some of the challenges to conductors in performing it; commentator Paul Griffiths places the work in the context of...
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Luciano Berio's Sinfonia
Conductor Richard Bernas recalls his momentous first encounter with Berio's Sinfonia, a work which reflected and commented on the events of its time, from the Paris riots to the assassination of Martin Luther King, and whose third movement is an extraordinary assemblage of musical and literary...
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Arvo Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
Roxanna Panufnik nominates Arvo Part's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, "beautifully simple and spiritual" music that she feels a strong connection to; while Paul Griffiths tells of Part's early struggle to find his own voice in Soviet Estonia and subsequent breakthrough with a radical new...
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Morton Feldman's Extensions 3
Howard Skempton singles out Extensions 3 by the American composer Morton Feldman, a piece he found "liberating, inspiring, and radically different". Paul Griffiths places the work in Feldman's early output and highlights the challenges to performers of music which is both very slow and very…
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Conlon Nancarrow's Study No.21
Stephen Fry describes his delight and bewilderment at first hearing Conlon Nancarrow's Study No. 21 - also known as Canon X - for player piano. Nancarrow devoted his composing life to creating futuristic canonic studies for his custom-altered 1920s Ampico instrument, combining elements of jazz,...
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Brian Ferneyhough's Bone Alphabet
Percussionist Steven Schick recalls how a chance meeting with Brian Ferneyhough led to the commission of Bone Alphabet, the composer's only piece for non-pitched instruments; and writer Paul Griffiths describes the work's physicality and rhythmic complexity.
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Howard Skempton's Lento
Artist Tom Phillips on Howard Skempton's Lento for orchestra, a completely tonal piece that he admires for achieving "content with simplicity"; Gillian Moore puts it in the context of the English experimentalist tradition; and the composer himself explains in detail the process by which he...
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Edgard Varese's Poeme electronique
Composer and former Battles frontman Tyondai Braxton nominates Poeme electronique by Edgard Varese, whose soundworld has been a continuing influence on his own work; while Gillian Moore tells the story of Varese's long struggle to create a futuristic music that he finally achieved in this piece,...
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John Cage's 4'33"
Artist Tacita Dean on John Cage's legendary 4'33" and how it provided an inspiration for Stillness, her 2007 project with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Conductor and Cage collaborator Richard Bernas underlines some important but often neglected aspects of the score and draws a parallel with the...
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Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning
Pianist and Scratch Orchestra member John Tilbury speaks up for The Great Learning by the radical British composer and political activist Cornelius Cardew. Paul Griffiths explains its place in Cardew's musical and political thinking, and the composer suggests musicians abandon ‘individual choice’...
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Iannis Xenakis's Nomos Alpha
Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explains how Iannis Xenakis uses the symmetry of a cube to determine musical parameters in Nomos Alpha for solo cello; Paul Griffiths highlights the composer's innovations in the fields of sound and instrumental writing; and we hear an archive interview in which...
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Louis Andriessen's De Staat
Dutch composer Michel van der Aa salutes compatriot Louis Andriessen's 1976 work for amplified voices and large ensemble, De Staat. Gillian Moore highlights the modern scoring of the work, informed as much by rock music as Stravinsky, while the composer himself reveals how a recording of a…
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Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre
Sir Harrison Birtwistle singles out Pierre Boulez's 1950s cycle for voice and mixed ensemble, and describes encountering the score for the first time, while Paul Griffiths explains how the composer employed total serialism and a radical new approach to instrumentation in illuminating the…
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Elliott Carter's String Quartet No.3
Novelist and poet Mark Haddon explains what it is about Elliott Carter's String Quartet No.3 that reminds him of an argumentative family meal; the composer himself describes with relish his 'eclipses' of sound; and Paul Griffiths explains Carter's use of metric modulation.
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Gyorgy Ligeti's Atmospheres
Film-maker Sophie Fiennes explains why she chose György Ligeti's Atmosphères for the soundtrack of a film about artist Anselm Kiefer, and Paul Griffiths explains its significance in Ligeti's development of cloud-like musical structures. And we also hear from the composer himself.
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Steve Reich's Different Trains
Matthew Herbert, songwriter and electronic music producer, reflects on the continuing relevance of Steve Reich's seminal 1988 piece for string quartet and tape, where recorded speech leads the melodic lines to create a remarkable and evocative atmosphere. The feature includes commentary from the...
About this show
Artists, musicians and composers introduce fifty key pieces of classical music composed between 1950 and 2000. As featured in the BBC Radio 3 programme, Hear & Now.
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