Born in a church tower in the village of Polička in the Bohemian-Moravian highlands, Bohuslav Martinů began violin lessons aged 7 and was sent to the Prague Conservatory, funded by the Polička villagers. In 1923 he moved to Paris to study, and stayed for 17 years, absorbing the avant-garde as well as jazz influences. He fled Paris for the USA following the German invasion of 1940, taking up teaching posts at Tanglewood and at Princeton University. Settling in New York, he was championed by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Martinů's prolific output of over 400 works crosses all genres – from piano solo to opera, from chamber music to ballet and film music – and his unclassifiable style has contributed to his works falling into neglect. Among his masterpieces is the cantata The Epic of Gilgamesh (1955) and the operas Julietta (1938) and The Greek Passion (1959). Also among his most significant works is the Piano Concerto No. 4,  (1956), subtitled "Incantation". The work is in two movements and the subtitle of the work definitely guides us through this fantastic, incantatory music. Martinů wrote program notes to his Sixth Symphony (subtitled "Fantaisies symphoniques") and his thoughts surely hold true for the Piano Concerto No. 4: "I wished to write something for Charles Munch (conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra). I … like his spontaneous approach to the music where music takes shape in a free way, flowing and freely following its movements." Watch a thrilling performance of Bohuslav  Martinů's Piano Concerto No. 4 (1956), "Incantation" played by pianist Ivo Kahanek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Jiří Bělohlávek conducting  . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

The career of Joseph Schwantner is perhaps as prestigious as that of any living American composer at the turn of the twenty-first century. Although trained in the high-serialist school, the mid-1970s saw Schwantner abandon that style in favor of a distinctly coloristic, harmonically rich, but solidly tonal (albeit often "pantonal") sound. His voice throughout the 1970s and 1980s is often characterized by rich, dark brass scoring, lurching polyrhythms, and mesmerizing ostinati. One favorite technique is the employment of "ringing sonorities," or sounds that are articulated loudly then suppressed and sustained. These sounds resonate with Schwantner's evocative titles like From a Dark Millennium (1980), Aftertones of Infinity (1978), and Wild Angels of the Open Hills (1978). His timbral palette is further enhanced by the use of nontraditional instruments like crystal glasses, water gongs, and bowed cymbals. Schwantner's style in the 1990s combined occasional excursions into disorienting atonal and vaguely serialist areas with weighty and often overpowering tonal blocks, and continued to explore new timbres. His honors include a Pulitzer Prize (1979), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and no less than six Composers Fellowship Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Hear the interview Joseph Schwantner made for the Ford Foundation's "Made in America" commission series - Made in America Interview (or check here). . . it's this week COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Mario Verandi is an Argentinean born composer, sound and media artist. He primarily works with new technologies as an aid to exploring and expanding the boundaries of sound, space, perception and meaning. A distinct characteristic of his work has been the exploration of the poetic and evocative potential of concrete and environmental sounds and their incorporation in sound compositions, audiovisual installations, live performances and radio art pieces. His works have received prizes and awards in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), Musica Nova Competition (Prague), CIEJ Electronic Music Awards (Barcelona), Prix Ars Electronica (Linz), Stockholm Electronic Art Awards (Sweden), SGAE Electroacoustic Music Competition (Spain) and the European Bell Days Composition Prize (ZKM, Karlsruhe). He has a long-standing interest in interdisciplinary projects and as a result has created music and sound designs for art installations, dance, theatre, films and the radio. Verandi has collaborated among others with the American visual artist Catherine Ferguson, German choreographer Helge Musial, Polish theater director Grazyna Kania, German film-maker Harun Farocki, German visual artist Corinna Rosteck, Berlin-based visual artitst Lillevan and Russian visual artists Igor and Svetlana Kopystianski. Listen to Mario Verandi's electroacoutic work Prague - Imaginary Fragments (2006) . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Anna Meredith is a composer and performer of both acoustic and electronic music. Meredith's music has been performed everywhere from the Last Night of the Proms to flashmob performances in the M6 Services, Soundwave Festival to London Fashion Week, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival to the Ether Festival, and broadcast on Radio 1, 3, 4 & 6 She has been Composer in Residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, RPS/PRS Composer in the House with Sinfonia ViVA, the classical music representative for the 2009 South Bank Show Breakthrough Award and winner of the 2010 Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers. During 2012 Meredith wrote HandsFree as a PRS/RPS 20x12 Commission for the National Youth Orchestra which was performed at the BBC Proms, Barbican Centre and Symphony Hall as well as numerous flashmob performances around the UK. Her debut EP - Black Prince Fury was released on Moshi Moshi records to critical acclaim including Drowned in Sound's Single of the Year. Listen to Anna Meredith's Nautilus (2012) (part of that debut EP) . . . one of our PTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Carlos Chavez's Ten Preludes for Piano, composed in 1937, is quite different in treatment from Chavez's earlier piano works. Both in form and in the natural pianism of the Preludes, Chavez renounced some of his former stridency and created instead a modern counterpart (terse, linear, percussive) of Bach's preludes. The composer wrote: "My plan was to write one for each of the seven white keys. I composed, then, a Prelude in each of the Gregorian modes. Thus I started with the Dorian and followed with Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, and Hypolydian. These seven modes taken care of, I decided to expand the series to ten and continued with a kind of bimodality in the eighth and a mixture of modality-tonality in the ninth and tenth. In almost all of my previous works there is evidence of procedures that are classic or academic, such as imitations, progressions, sequences, etc. In these Preludes, I indeed followed some of these procedures, since I felt that at least here they were capable of going beyond traditional effects." The Ten Preludes possess a hypnotizing monotony, the kind associated with the ritual music of the Aztecs. Instead of attempting to reproduce a direct reflection of the spirit of Mexico, Chavez has created a synthesis of that spirit. Watch a performance of two of Chavez's Ten Preludes played by pianist Mauricio Garza . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.


Pierre Boulez is among the most influential contemporary musicians, as both a composer and a conductor. He is known principally for his extension of the techniques of serialism beyond the limits of the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, under the strong influence of his teacher Messiaen, into a logical style that brings with it a paradoxical freedom. His career as a conductor has brought him engagements with the most famous orchestras in a  wide repertoire, from Rameau to Wagner to the contemporary. Listen to an interview with Pierre Boulez as he discusses his life and his music . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.
 
. . . and watch a performance of his Le soleil des eaux (1948/65) with soprano Elizabeth Atherton, the BBC Singers and Symphony Chorus, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer, Pierre Boulez.


Composer John Corigliano writes: "When Sylvia McNair asked me to write her a major song cycle for Carnegie Hall, she had only one request; to choose an American text. I have set only four poets in my adult compositional life: Stephen Spender, Richard Wilbur, Dylan Thomas and William M. Hoffman. Aside from asking William Hoffman to create a new text, I had no ideas. Except that I had always heard, by reputation, of the high regard accorded the folk-ballad singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. But I was so engaged in developing my orchestral technique during the years when Dylan was heard by the rest of the world that I had never heard his songs. So I bought a collection of his texts, and found many of them to be every bit as beautiful and as immediate as I had heard, and surprisingly well-suited to my own musical language. I then contacted Jeff Rosen, his manager, who approached Bob Dylan with the idea of re-setting his poetry to my music. I do not know of an instance in which this has been done before (which was part of what appealed to me), so I needed to explain that these would be in no way arrangements, or variations, or in any way derivations of the music of the original songs, which I decided to not hear before the cycle was complete. Just as Schumann or Brahms or Wolf had re-interpreted in their own musical styles the same Goethe text, I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be. Nor would their settings make any attempt at pop or rock writing. I wanted to take poetry I knew to be strongly associated with popular art and readdress it in terms of concert art-crossover in the opposite direction, one might say. Dylan granted his permission, and I set to work. I chose seven poems for what became a thirty-five minute song cycle." Hear soprano Hege Monica Eskedal and pianist Eva Herheim perform Chimes of Freedom from Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man (2000) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

The years Bohuslav Martinu spent in America between 1941 and 1953 weren't happy ones; the combination of political events in Czechoslovakia, the turmoil of World War II, and Martinu's residing in a country he found less than congenial depressed his spirits considerably. Nevertheless, he managed to keep up his usual prolific pace of composition. In his first five years in America he had produced fully 25 new pieces, and the spirit of optimism upon the end of the war brought Martinu a new burst of creativity; the Symphony No. 4, one of Martinu's most engaging and mellow orchestral works, was born of this spirit. The symphony was written between April and June 1945, mostly in New York and partly at Martinu's summer home near South Orleans, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod [from the All Music Guide]. Watch a performance of the first part of the scherzo-like second movement of Martinu's Symphony No. 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

The All Music Guide writes about Ástor Piazzolla's 6 Études tanguistiques . . . "These six tango etudes are a highly original blending of the classical concert etude and Piazzolla's "new tango" music. They present the player with technical challenges pertaining to given aspect of flute playing, yet are effective concert works. Although the tango rhythm is never very far away in this set, much of the interest of the music lies in how Piazzolla finds new textures and playing techniques for the solo flute. They were composed in 1987 and belong to a group of works from Piazzolla's later career in which he returned to "classical" specification of the musical moment while by no means abandoning his connection to the tango". Watch a performance of Tango Etudes 1 & 3 by flutist Claudio Barile . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Bohuslav Martinů managed to become not only the greatest Czech composer of his generation, but a major international figure, known especially for his concerti and chamber music. The rhythmic vitality and pronounced lyricism of his music recall the styles of both Dvorak and Stravinsky. Martinů began as a follower of Debussy, but after moving to Paris he became part of the avant-garde there. He experimented with jazz, a Bartok-like rhapsodic style, and neoclassic fun-and-games in the manner of Les Six. He came increasingly under the influence of Stravinsky, but unlike many others, moved more and more towards his Czech roots and folk influences via a neoclassic musical view. During World War II, Martinů fled to the United States, and thereafter, his work opened up emotionally, without losing its considerable craft. He became a major 20th-century symphonist, writing six symphonies, as well as contributing major vocal works for the operatic stage, and cantatas for chorus and orchestra. Hear him talk about his life and his music . . . our Pytheas COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) is a non-profit organization, based in Toronto, that produces performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art. Included in its productions are: Deep Wireless, Sound Travels, Arts Birthday and SOUNDplay. The objectives of New Adventures in Sound Art are to foster awareness and understanding locally, as well as nationally and internationally, in the cultural vitality of experimental sound art in its myriad forms of expression. This objective is achieved through the exploration of new sound technologies in conjunction with the creation of cultural events and artifacts. Check them out! They're this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.