One stop for American music, Boulez on Boulez, and a wealth of new opera

American archive
When New World Records acquired the defunct Composers Recordings, Inc label in 2006 they made this unique catalogue of American music available as burn-on-demand CD-Rs – but now the label’s complete output has been put on the New World Records website for download. Despite its rather Ronseal name, Composers Recordings, Inc did more than it says on the tin. Founded by two composers, Otto Luening and Douglas Moore, CRI documented American music of all shapes, sizes and stylistic persuasion. The label became synonymous with Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and John Cage but there are jovially performed discs of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter songs, and music by the likes of Ned Rorem, David Del Tredici (his classic ‘Alice’ Symphony), and Jacob Druckman there for the taking, too. And many rarities and byways – there’s a muscular performance of Marc Blitzstein’s never-heard Piano Concerto and discs dedicated to mystical modernist Dane Rudhyar and Claudio Spies, whose music Stravinsky rated highly. Entry via the New World Records homepage: newworldrecords.org

Historic Boulez
Boulez’s 2011 performances of Pli selon pliare likely to be his last word on a work he began to assemble back in 1957, and that he’s revised and reassessed many times since. Although he recorded it in 2000 with soprano Christine Schäfer, many Boulezistas reckoned these new performances represented an ultimate director’s cut. Either way, having Boulez’s 2011 Lucerne Festival performance on the web courtesy of Arte Live Web is an omnivorous treat.
liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Pli_selon_Pli_Pierre_Boulez_Ensemble_Intercontemporain_Salle_Pleyel

New opera online
The Tête à Tête opera company has been staging new opera since 1998, and has shifted its back-catalogue of new pieces to the virtual stage of clickable video clips. I’ve just watched Krazy Kat, where the sped-up hysterics of Joanna Lee’s music seems absolutely right for the post-Tom and Jerry cat-and-mouse games of Howard Skempton’s words. There are also pieces from the likes of Philip Cashian and David Bruce.
tete-a-tete.org.uk/archive


Philip Clark