Jeux Venitiens

Witold Lutoslawski

Conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen celebrates the music of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski and his  landmark work from the early 1960s, Jeux Venitiens.  Writer Paul Griffiths explains how the composer used chance within the score to create rhythmic complexity; and we hear from Lutoslawski himself, in conversation with Thea Musgrave in 1973.

Witold Lutoslawski's Jeux Venitiens

Composer Matthew Shlomowitz makes the case for Austrian composer Bernhard Lang’s Differenz/Wiederholung 2, a setting of texts by Gilles Deleuze, William Burroughs and Christian Loidl. Commentator Graham McKenzie highlights the jagged soundworld of this music, and the composer’s use of repetition.

Bernhard Lang's Differenz/Wiederholung 2

Eliane Radigue

Author and journalist Rob Young nominates French composer Eliane Radigue's Songs of Milarepa, which combines drone-like electronics with the voices of Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Robert Ashley singing and reading the words of the 11th-century Tibetan Buddhist poet Jetsun Milarepa. With commentary from Richard Whitelaw, Head of Programmes at Sound and Music.

Eliane Radigue's Songs of Milarepa

Heiner Goebbels

Hear and Now presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch celebrates the music of German composer Heiner Goebbels, focusing on the Suite for Sampler and Orchestra from his 1994 cycle Surrogate Cities.  Commentary comes from Graham McKenzie of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and we also hear the voice of the composer himself.

Heiner Goebbels's Surrogate Cities

Gerard Grisey

Composer Julian Anderson singles out Partiels for orchestra, from French spectralist Gerard Grisey’s cycle of works Les Espaces Acoustiques. With commentary from writer Paul Griffiths.

Gerard Grisey's Partiels

Igor Stravinsky

Requiem Canticles

Composer John Woolrich nominates Stravinsky's last completed work with orchestra, Requiem Canticles. Commentator Paul Griffiths explains how this sparsely scored "pocket requiem", written in 1966 in a modern serial style, contains many of the hallmarks of his very earliest pieces.

Igor Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles

Novelist and critic Philip Hensher makes the case for Per Norgard's Symphony No.2, one of the first works in which the Danish composer used his own 'infinity series' to determine melody and form. With commentary from Paul Griffiths.

Per Norgard's Symphony No.2

John Zorn

Critic and Hear and Now presenter Tom Service nominates American composer John Zorn’s Carny, a work for solo piano from 1989.  The piece assembles a wide range of musical quotations and genres, juxtaposing Stockhausen and Bartok with cartoon music and boogie woogie.  Author and journalist Rob Young provides some background to the work and to Zorn himself, a highly regarded improviser and producer as well as composer.

John Zorn's Carny

Pianist Nicolas Hodges nominates Jean Barraque's Chant apres chant, one of just a handful of surviving works by this contemporary of Boulez and Stockhausen whose death in 1973 at the age of 45 robbed the contemporary music world of one of its most innovative and deeply expressive voices.  With commentary from writer Paul Griffiths.

Jean Barraque's Chant apres chant

Sound artist Kaffe Matthews on Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room and how it’s provided an inspiration for her own work in the field of site specific music; David Toop explains how the piece explores both the acoustic properties of enclosed spaces and the complexities of the human voice; and we hear from the composer himself about his approach to live performance.

Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room

Artists, musicians and composers introduce fifty key pieces of classical music composed between 1950 and 2000. As featured in the BBC Radio 3 programme, Hear &amp; Now.

What lledmar said.

It Won't Play

Radio 3's Fifty Modern Classics

Pauline Oliveros

Composer and Hear and Now presenter Robert Worby singles out V of IV, an early electronic work by American pioneer Pauline Oliveros; author and journalist Rob Young provides the background to this period of her work, and we also hear from the composer herself.

Pauline Oliveros's V of IV

Gyorgy Kurtag

Critic and Hear and Now presenter Ivan Hewett nominates Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag's Officium Breve in memoriam Andreae Szervanszky for string quartet. With commentary from writer Paul Griffiths.

Gyorgy Kurtag's Officium Breve

Terry Riley

Singer and conductor Paul Hillier celebrates Terry Riley’s icon of musical minimalism and monument to the experimental atmosphere of 60s West Coast America, In C. With commentary from Richard Bernas.

Terry Riley's In C

Gavin Bryars

Gavin Bryars's mould-breaking 1971 score Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a work which came about almost accidentally, when Bryars found a recording of an elderly homeless man singing lines from a Victorian hymn. Cultural historian Robert Hewison makes the case for why the work is important, and commentary comes from author and musician David Toop.

Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Morton Subotnick

Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden explains why Silver Apples of the Moon by the American composer Morton Subotnick stands out for him as a classic of early electronic music.  Author and journalist Rob Young provides some background to the work, which was created on a Buchla synthesizer at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and conceived specifically for two sides of an LP.

Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the Moon

Cellist Frances-Marie Uitti celebrates the music of Giacinto Scelsi, the Italian composer from an aristocratic background whose work looks to the East for inspiration.  Ygghur is Sanskrit for catharsis and is the final part of Scelsi's autobiographical La Trilogia. With commentary from Paul Griffiths.

Giacinto Scelsi's Ygghur

Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard champions the music of maverick German composer Helmut Lachenmann and his 1980s work for ensemble Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung); conductor Richard Bernas explains how the use of unconventional playing techniques created a rich and highly crafted soundworld the composer has described as "musique concrete instrumentale".

Helmut Lachenmann's Mouvement

Michael Nyman

Violinist Alexander Balanescu recounts his part in Michael Nyman's groundbreaking score for Peter Greenaway's 1982 feature film The Draughtsman's Contract; while commentator Gillian Moore links Nyman's work to the British experimental music tradition.

Michael Nyman's The Draughtsman's Contract

Author Paul Griffiths singles out this early work for ensemble by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen, a sonic evocation of nature which takes its name from a poem by Georg Trakl; Gillian Moore highlights some of the other influences at work, including the pictures of M.C. Escher, one of the piece’s dedicatees.

Hans Abrahamsen's Winternacht

Claude Vivier

The soprano Barbara Hannigan celebrates Claude Vivier’s profoundly moving work for soprano and orchestra, Lonely Child.  Vivier conceived the piece as one single melody, with the entire orchestra "transformed into a timbre", to create "great beams of colour". Writer Paul Griffiths explains how Stockhausen, Gregorian chant and the traditional music of Bali all contributed to this composer’s distinctive soundworld.

Claude Vivier's Lonely Child

Galina Ustvolskaya

Composer and writer Gerard McBurney nominates the austere and uncompromising Octet by Galina Ustvolskaya, which changed his ideas of modern Russian music; and Gillian Moore highlights the intensity of this work, completed in 1950, in the shadow of the Soviet Zhdanov decree.

Galina Ustvolskaya's Octet

Harrison Birtwistle

Pianist Joanna MacGregor celebrates Harrison Birtwistle’s The Triumph of Time, an orchestral work she describes as “sculpted, dream-like and mesmeric”; Paul Griffiths remembers the London premiere and how it marked a new departure for the composer, and Birtwistle himself reflects on the subject of time in music.

Harrison Birtwistle's The Triumph of Time

Kevin Volans

Choreographer Siobhan Davies nominates White Man Sleeps by the South African-born composer Kevin Volans, and describes the experience of her collaboration with the composer; writer Paul Griffiths puts the work in the context of Cologne in the late 1970s; and Volans himself explains how he set out to integrate African and European aesthetics in this piece, which draws on traditional music from southern Africa and is scored for viola da gamba, two harpsichords and percussion.

Kevin Volans's White Man Sleeps

Gillian Moore champions George Benjamin’s early orchestral score At First Light, praising its “extraordinary detail and skill”; while writer and critic Paul Griffiths assesses the significance of the work for British composing in the 1980s.

George Benjamin's At First Light

Olivier Messiaen

Composer George Benjamin advocates the "exuberant, thrilling and virtuosic" orchestral piece Chronochromie by his former teacher, Olivier Messiaen; while Paul Griffiths describes the significance of this work in the European avant-garde scene of the 1960s.

Olivier Messiaen's Chronochromie

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