Walter Piston was a leading light among those mid-twentieth century American composers who opted to explore traditional musical forms and language. Although he was perhaps better known as a teacher and the author of a widely used book on harmony than as a composer, Piston's music displays superb craftsmanship within his selected neo-Classic-Romantic idiom. Piston wrote his Piano Quintet in 1949 on commission from the University of Michigan. The sense of elegance and calm that opens the work seems to flow from the French roots of the composer's studies with Nadia Boulanger; indeed, the spirit of Piston's work at times recalls the chamber music of Gabriel Faure. His treatment of his thematic material is more a matter of textural variation rather than formal development; the music is by turns flowing, staccato, and stormy, the piano taking a concerto-like solo role throughout. In the finale, a jittery syncopated rhythm creates a jazz-like atmosphere, interrupted by a contrasting central section [our thanks on this note to the AllMusicGuide]. Watch a performance of Piston's Piano Quintet played by pianist Leonid Treer and the Miami String Quartet . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

During the second half of the 20th century Manuel Enríquez was the predominant personality on the Mexican musical scene, not only as a composer, but also as an administrator, teacher, diffuser and active member of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the country. His dynamic presence, and abundant musical activity for three decades, made him a  pillar in Mexican music. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971, and went to the Center of Electronic Music at Columbia University to experiment with Electronics and to study the new resources afforded by contemporary technology. He considered electronics to be just another tool for the contemporary composer. And because of his desire to keep up with new tendencies in composition, he attended the renowned international courses of Darmstadt where he made contacts with the great European avant-garde composers: Berio, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Penderecki and Ligeti. Between 1975 and 1977, Enríquez lived in Paris, commissioned by the Mexican government to promote Mexican music in Europe. He gave recitals (he was also a renowned violinist) in Vienna, Paris, Bonn, Warsaw, Bourges, etc. This intense activity also included lecturers on new music in Mexico and helped to make known Mexican composers in Europe. In many ways Enríquez was a pioneer in the field of new execution techniques and in specializing in contemporary repertoire. Yet his most important field remained composition. Heir to the school of Bernal Jimenez, he quickly broached new directions that included poly-tonality, dodecaphonism, alleatoric and electronic music. His extensive catalogue of nearly 150 works, includes all genres of instruments, sporadic encounters with vocal music, electroacoustic music, and music with purely electronic sounds and multimedia. Listen to Manuel Enríquez's Viols (1971) . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Concert musician (oboe and English horn), piano accompanist and composer Ayser Vançin is passionate about poetry and literature, finding inspiration from the poet-humanists. Her deep embrace of words and notes is a bridge between East and Occident. Among her compositions are works for ensembles including winds, with or without piano. Her latest works for musical theater include: Nuage Amoureux (Cloud of Love), D'Exil en Exil (Of Exile in Exile) [on text and emotive poems of Nazim Hikmet], Regard Noir, Langue de Feu (Black Gaze, Tongue of Fire) [on text of Senghor], La Rencontre Aragon-Hikmet (The Aragon-Hikmet Meeting) [on texts of these writers], Voyage Poetico-Musical en Orient Express: Paris-Istanbul (A Poetic-Musical Voyage on the Orient Express: Paris-Istanbul) [show route, literature and music, a bridge between France and Turkey], Chants de la Vigne (Songs of the Vine) [an intoxicating spectacle of poetry and music bacchanalia around wine], Chants des Hommes (Songs of Men) [a show of words and notes about universal writers and poets] and a delicious spectacle of songs [texts from Verlaine, Aragon, Hikmet, Supervielle, Maeterlinck, Lent, Molin, Vian, Ungaretti] called Vers a Chanter, Vers Enchantes (Towards Singing, Towards the Enchanted) featuring singer Mathieu Chardet. Listen to a performance of Ayser Vançin's Les plaintes d'un Icare (2004) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Swedish composer Stefan Klaverdal is from Stockholm and studied composition with Maurice Karkoff and Hans Gefors, among others. He graduated in 2003 with a Master of Arts in composition from the Malmo Academy of Music. He is one of his generation's most active and performed composers and his music has been performed countless times in Europe and elsewhere. In recent years, his focus has been on purely vocal and instrumental pieces in combination with live electronics. A prominent and long-standing feature of Klaverdal’s work is cross-genre collaboration, especially his music for dance performances and for dance and art films. He was originally a singer, and strives to reproduce these lyrical and human qualities in his compositions. With live electronics as an active extension of his own voice, he paints acoustic-electronic landscapes from a palette of passion, drama and beauty. Listen to a performance of Stefan Klaverdal's piece for alto saxophone and computer Prayer of a King (2004) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.