Customer Reviews

Xenakis: Metastasis; Pithoprakta; Eonta

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Iannis Xenakis, who died a few years ago, was an uncompromising modernist radical. A professionally-trained mathematician who based his music on research into probability theory and advanced computer modelling techniques, Xenakis developed a musical language that strikes many people as soul-less note spinning. I'm not exactly radically-inclined when it comes to XXth century music (I love and appreciate Hindemith and Rachmaninoff every bit as much as Schoenberg and Carter), but I find Xenakis fascinating! True, his music often sounds like pumped-up Varese, but I also find in it a rare and pure beauty of absolute sound production. This CD contains French analog recordings from the late 1960's that were, at that time, licensed to the Vanguard label for U.S. release. (They appeared, to great critical acclaim, on a Vanguard "Cardinal" Lp around about 1970.) On this beautifully presented French CD they sound even better now than they did back then: there is next to no discernible tape hiss from the Dolby/Analog source which presents a wide-open soundscape with razor-sharp clarity. The whole production makes the very best technological and musical case for Xenakis's strangely compelling sound world. Really good stuff, if you have adventurous ears!

This disc contains recordings from the 1960s of three pieces by Iannis Xenakis performed by two French ensembles, the ORTF conducted by Maurie Le Roux on the orchestral works, and the Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine de Paris conducted by Konstantin Simonovic on the chamber work. Xenakis is one of the most fascinating of twentieth-century composers. An outsider to the avant-garde establishment whose day job was architecture, his main passion was mathematics. He had no interest in traditional melody or harmony, but rather sought to create music out of the most complicated notions. His teacher Olivier Messiaen spurred him to continue on in this vein, noting that he was doing something no one else had before. Yes, Xenakis' work is rigourously mathematical, but it sounds not cold and dispassionate, but eye-opening and expansive.

"Metastasis" (1953-1954) is probably Xenakis' best-known piece, and his first mature work. It is a piece of great proportions, 61 instrumentalists playing 61 different parts. The opening is stunning, gradually each of the strings enters sustaining a single note, creating a massive wall of sound before some strings go astray to other notes and pizzicato playing and the rest of the orchestra shows up. Closely related to the composer's design of the Couvent de la Tourette near Lyons, much of the dynamics of this first portion is based on the Fibonacci sequence, with nearly every decision in the work, from the structures of intervals to the length of dynamics and tones. The second section is more traditional, as the bulk of the orchestral forces remain silent with some strings playing a contrapuntal passage with drumrolls in the background and the occasional spotting of brass. Even though this is an AAD recording, the sound quality is superb, with next to no hiss and wonderful dynamics. "Metastasis" sounds way better here than the SWF-Symphony Orchestra/Hans Rosbaud recording on Col legno, the other big historical performance of the work.

"Pithoprakta" (1955-1956) was Xenakis' follow-up to "Metastasis", and sets off on a new course that was to concern the composer for several years. Gone is the inspiration of the Fibonacci sequence, and instead Xenakis creates music of *probabilities*. As a result, the music sounds less focused (think of Lutoslawski's "hesitant" music on steroids), but ultimately richer in timbre and rhythm. The piece's opening consists of the string players knocking on the bodies of their instruments, only the first in a series of explorations of texture, rich with pizzicato, glissandi, trombones sounding, and even woodblock percussion. Even though this is arguably random music, there's such a pulse of life here that even conservative listeners might find themselves won over. A similar piece is "Eonta" for piano and brass quintet (1963), influenced by the ST series of small probabilistic compositions Xenakis had made in the previous years, but written more freely. The piano part is very stochastic, creating music which is remarkable in sound to Boulez's second piano sonata even though it is not serial. The brass interrupt the piano's course from time to time, and exhibit microtonal sounds that contrast with the fixed pitches of the piano. This is the only piece on the disc I don't enjoy, for it is overlong and the instrumentation doesn't work, especially when it comes right after the grandeur of Xenakis' writing for orchestra.

If one wants an introduction to the entire breadth of Xenakis' career, the recent Col legno disc ("Orchestral Works and Chamber Music") is probably the best choice, but for fantastic performances of Xenakis' riotously original early works look here.

Three of Xenakis's most glorious works.Everything here is a million miles from the arid wastes of so much avant-garde music from this period (but not nice and pretty either!)......it all feels so fresh and invigorating!

The Peformances have a sense of discovery which is palpable whether it's the unearthly scurryings which open Pithoprakta or the great torrents of notes in the solo piano part of Eonta.Yuji Takahashi's handling of the piano part seems more successful than the more recent (live recording)by his sister.

This recording by Chant du Monde contains the best of Xenakis' works. It was issued about 1969 in the U.S. by Vanguard. This CD is the same recording. The two orchestral pieces, Metastasis and Pithoprakta, which date from 1954 and 1956, owe much to Olivier Messiaen, Xenakis' best teacher. Messiaen encouraged Xenakis to compose the kind of music Xenakis wished to create. What Messiaen gave him was a sense of structure and an interest in creating a warmth of sound. Metastasis means transformation; as an architect Xenakis was interested in how shapes can be altered. Pithoprakta means actions based upon probabilities; the composer, who was also a mathematician, liked probability theory and used it to suggest ways to vary sounds.

Eonta, Xenakis's first work for chamber orchestra, was written early in the 60's. He deeply loved Greek culture. What seems to have inspired him was, first, the discovery in his time of how to read Mycenaean Greek, and second, reading what little is extant of the poem Parmenides, a pre-Socratic philosopher, wrote long ago. In Mycenaean Eonta means beings. In Parmenides' poem, which is in Classical Greek, the word means things as they really are.

Why was Xenakis affected by such seemingly negligible details? The answer is Xenakis was very proud of his Greek heritage. It stimulated his creativity. He fought against the occupation of Greece by the Nazis; he even lost an eye while fighting for his country.

The best way to understand the first two pieces is to view them as descriptions in sound of the buildings he worked on. Xenakis was an architect and designed buildings that had very fluid designs and did not look like boxes, as did the buildings of many other architects of his time. Eonta is at first tougher to understand. Xenakis was also a mathematician and was fascinated with numbers. Think of the pianist as playing out series of numbers that steadily increase and decrease. Think of the three trumpets and three trombones as architectural designs that curve and sweep around the numbers.

This is not typical music. For example, it does not use scales and modes. The recording was made at a time when LPs could only contain much smaller amounts of music than a CD can. There are only thirty-nine minutes of music on the CD, but they are, for me, Xenakis' best thirty-nine minutes. Did he write other good works? Yes. I heard several others performed in New York in the 70's and 80's, but these are the ones that have most impressed me.

I forgot how much I love this CD -- it's been a while since I heard it. Metastasis is the perfect piece to play for someone who doesn't "hear the structure" in "modern" music. The whole thing is flawless. The brass writing in Eonta is amazing.