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NEW • NOUVEAUTE • NEUHEIT
01/09-(5)
Title:
Conlon Nancarrow
(1912-1997)
Studies for Player Piano
arr. for wind quintet and piano
by Raaf Hekkema
Musicians:
Calefax Reed Quintet
Ivo Janssen, piano
1 CD
Order Number:
MDG 619 1548-2
UPC-Code:
Reed and Roll
The player piano lives on – this time in an arrangement
for wind quintet and piano! During the mid-twentieth
century Conlon Nancarrow almost always composed for
the roll because he believed that no human being would
ever be able to perform his music live. The Dutch
Calefax ensemble teaches the American composer a
posthumous lesson on this point with its recording of
fourteen of his Studies. This version of Nancarrow’s
musical experiments by the saxophonist Raaf Hekkema
presents them as they never have been heard before!
Right On
The Calefax Quintet of reed instrumentalists is at home
on concert stages throughout the world. In their more
than six hundred concerts the musicians have presented
their extensive and always extraordinary repertoire with
great humor and success. They do not operate on the
basis of a set formula: early music and the classical
greats are presented with just as much vibrant originality
as are jazz and contemporary compositions in the
originals or in sometimes absolutely wild arrangements.
High virtuosity and fine wind sounds are their hallmarks.
Real Thing
Conlon Nancarrow punched the paper holes for his roles
by hand. When his Studies were first performed on the
pianola, they had not yet seen score paper. During a
creative pause in the 1960s, the genial musician wrote
out some transcriptions, thus enabling his friend, the
pianist Yvar Mikhashoff, to invest his phenomenal
technique and great courage in the performance of one
first work on a “real piano.“
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Nouvelles Suites
MDG 619 1374-2
Retirement Thanks
We have the Dutch hornist and music manager Jan
Wolff, a glowing admirer of Nancarrow’s music, to thank
for the present Calefax recording. Wolff asked
Mikhashoff for the arrangement of a Nancarrow Study for
woodwind instruments, and the successful premiere with
the composer in attendance paved the way for additional
arrangements, with Calefax going on to arrange a good
dozen of Nancarrow’s player piano compositions for wind
quintet and piano. These works were only recently
premiered, on the occasion of Wolff’s retirement from the
post of Muziekgebouw director in Amsterdam.
"600 Years of Calefax"
Works by Tschaikowsky, Byrd,
Debussy and Ockeghem
MDG 619 1043-2
J.S. Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge (arr.)
MDG 619 0989-2
Dimitri Schostakowitsch
Preludes and Fugues
MDG 619 1185-2
Nicolò Paganini
Caprices op. 1 (arr. for saxophone)
Raaf Hekkema, saxophones
MDG 619 1379-2
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