Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music [Box Set] [Box set]

Charles Ives (Composer), John [1] Cage (Composer), Pierre Boulez (Composer), Morton Feldman (Composer), Edgard Varese (Composer), Anton Webern (Composer), Gustav Mahler (Composer), Gyorgy Kurtag (Composer), Bela Bartok (Composer), Maurice Ravel (Composer), Beat Furrer (Composer), Bruno Maderna (Composer), Claude Debussy (Composer), Olivier Messiaen (Composer), Helmut Lachenmann (Composer), Igor Stravinsky (Composer), Klaus Huber (Composer), Mauricio Kagel (Composer), Luigi Nono (Composer), Elliott Carter (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Charles Ives, John [1] Cage, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varese, et al.
• Audio CD (November 15, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 8
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Col Legno
• ASIN: B000038IDI
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #756,880 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #65 in Music > Classical > Forms & Genres > Sonatas > Trio Sonatas

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

It starts, appropriately enough, with Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question, which seems to hold its breath, and occasionally exhale in brief bursts of panic, as the new century unfolds. It ends with Dmitri Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony Op. 110a (based on his String Quartet No. 8), whose alternating sequences of anguish, alarm, and derision come as close as possible for absolute music to indicting its bloody history--eight CDs and over 30 works later.

Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music represents as fine a look back at musical modernism as you're likely to get. And in what a lavish package! A tall box holding two multi-CD jewel boxes and a beautifully printed booklet with photographs of modern and postmodern architecture and extensive liner notes (in German). Even the CDs themselves look handsome. All the more amazing when you realize that the entire set was digitally recorded live--with coughs, turning pages, chair creaks, and vivid sound--during one week in 1998 in Stuttgart (where, it seems, you have to travel nowadays even to hear about this kind of music), by such groups as the RSO Saarbrücken and the Bamberger Symphoniker, led by Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Gielen, Heinz Holliger, and other risk takers. Each CD has been programmed around a theme; for example, "Explosion/Implosion" (featuring Varèse and Mahler's tone poem Totenfeier, later becoming the first movement of his Second Symphony) and "Minimal Postludien," which includes (heads up, completists) Philip Glass's Echorus for two solo violins and string orchestra and Ligeti's Ramifications. Stravinsky, who, like Schoenberg and Cage, appears to cast a long shadow over this imposing collection, remains one of the highlights: a sharp, fiercely erotic performance of Le Sacre by Lothar Zagrosek and the Stattsorchester Stuttgart that helps remind us how much modern music has done, in the face of controversy and disaster, to ground us in our humanity. --Robert Burns Neveldine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars BUT WHY?, May 14, 2002

By 

Anonymouse (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music [Box Set] (Audio CD)

At eight cds, this could have been a hefty set of 20th century orchestral music. But somewhere along the line, around the beginning of planning the festival I'm guessing, something went horribly wrong. There were eight concerts, each with a theme. The pieces chosen have often only a tenuous connection with the theme, if any. There are no women composers. There are no composers from Romania. There are no composers from the Czech Republic. There are no composers from Poland. That means no Gubuidulina, no Ana-Marie Avram, no Joan Tower. That means no Dumitrescu or Janacek or Lutoslawski. Can you believe it? A collection of twentieth century orchestral music with no Lutoslawski? Verily it boggleth the mind.

But so what? Are the pieces they did play well played? Well, sometimes. Gielen and Zender get predictably excellent results. But much of the rest sounds for all the world like first reads. Extremely sensitive and polished first reads to be sure, but no sense of piece qua piece, a thing with a shape from start to finish. (This is most apparent in the eccentric phrasing.) These are not the newer pieces, either, but Ives and Ravel and Bartok and Stravinsky. You know these people have played these pieces dozens of times. No excuse.

It's hard to fault a company (Col legno) that puts out so many fine performances of the likes of Helmut Lachenmann, but in this venture I really think they dropped the ball.

6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for lovers of modern music, June 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music [Box Set] (Audio CD)

This 8 CD collection contains a wonderfully diverse selection of works that trace the development of music through the century. This set contains music form the pivotal artists from the beginning of the century; Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartok, Ives and Varese. Master from later in the century include; Messiaen, Carter, Boulez, Cage, Feldman, Kurtag, Schnittke, Glass, and Ligeti. From the late romanticism of Mahler, to the impressionism of Ravel and Debussy, the atonality of the Second Viennese, the neo-styles of Stravinsky, Kurtag, Schostakovich, and Schnittke, to the minimalism of Glass, this collection has it all. Also within this collection are some classic compositions by lesser known masters such as; Maderna, Nono, Kagel. Rihm, Zimmerman, Furrer, and Lachenmann to name a few. Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Gielen, Heinze Holliger, and Hans Zender conduct superb performances of most of these classics. There is much to cherich in this collection, and are many treasures to be discovered.

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Recordings, December 29, 2000

By 

Rubens Altimari (Sao Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rückblick Moderne: 20th Century Orchestral Music [Box Set] (Audio CD)

I wish I could read in German! This is the only "flaw" of this edition, in my opinion: it seems to have a great booklet, but I can't read it. Otherwise, it is a great collection: excelent recordings, good choice of works. I find it an excelent intro to modern music.