Masterpieces of contemporary (art) music. Recommended popular pieces.

Bela Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and CelestaLinus Lerner

Bela Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

A mid-period masterpiece by the composer.

While drawing on Hungarian musical melodies, it unfolds a uniquely atonal world characteristic of the composer.

The uncanny theme at the opening, in fact rooted in folk music, is eloquently revealed at the very end of the finale.

Incidentally, the premiere was given by the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwängler.

Arthur Honegger – Oratorio «Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher»National Opera House, Kyiv

Arthur Honegger – Oratorio «Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher» – 14.03.2015, National Opera House, Kyiv

A grand, ninety-minute work that portrays the life of France’s legendary patriot Joan of Arc, centered on dialogues at the stake, featuring a large orchestra augmented by the original electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot, as well as mixed chorus and children’s chorus.

Both the heroine, Joan, and her co-starring father are performed by actors speaking lines.

Variations pour orchestre opus 31 d’Arnold SchoenbergPierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez : Variations pour orchestre opus 31 d’Arnold Schoenberg

A large-scale orchestral work that Schoenberg presented to the world as his ultimate confident statement after exploring various forms of twelve-tone composition.

The theme is said to be derived from J.S.

Bach, though it is difficult to discern by ear.

It demonstrates that, even under the constraint of incorporating all the notes within the octave into a single work, a composition can achieve such expressive richness.

Stravinsky Symphony In Three MovementsTania Miller

Stravinsky Symphony In Three Movements -Victoria Symphony -Tania Miller, conductor

A masterpiece of the neoclassical era in which Stravinsky interprets J.

S.

Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.

5 in his own way.

The composer himself said that while traveling in Germany during the Nazi era, he was shocked by a scene at a station where Jews were being assaulted, and that this became the impetus for the composition.

King KongThe Mothers of Invention

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention – King Kong (1968 at BBC) 1/3

Frank Zappa spent his 52-year life continually dismantling existing musical concepts, releasing a vast body of work, and astonishing music freaks around the world with his shocking live performances.

The fact that Zappa—who absorbed music of every stripe, whether high art or pop—decided to pursue music because of the avant-garde modern composer Edgard Varèse already tells you he didn’t have an ordinary sensibility.

Zappa left so much material that it’s hard to know where to begin, but this time I’d like to introduce King Kong, a track from Uncle Meat, an early masterpiece released in 1969 under the Mothers of Invention.

It’s a large-scale work in six-part medley form, with only Part 6 taken from a live recording, presenting a veritable kaleidoscope of music—approached through chamber-music techniques and spanning classical, free jazz, modern music, and even roots music.

Empty your mind and let yourself be swept away by the flood of sound!

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