Varèse: Intégrales

“Riccardo Chailly's 1996 account [of Amériques] is unlike any of its competitors in that it reconstructed for the first time Varèse's original version of the score from 1918-21, which uses a vast orchestra featuring 27 woodwind and 29 brass instruments - even a cyclone whistle. The recording certainly packs a punch, but the Concertgebouw players also revel in the many subtleties that colour the composer's unique orchestration. It comes as part of a two-disc release that features all of Varèse's surviving music - small in quantity but big on impact.” Matthew Rye, The Telegraph, 24th August 2008

“In future histories of music...Chou Wen-Chung...will have an important place as a 'bridge' between cultures in an increasingly globalized world. ...Chou actually helped something important, even miraculous happen. By taking on the 'cleansing' practice of Modernism, he gave young composers (especially Asian) a tool to approach their heritage with an objectivity that made for fresh and bracing music, weighed down neither with needless nostalgia nor a 'colonial' legacy. This release clearly demonstrates that admirable accomplishment” Fanfare

“There are better accounts of some of these pieces (virtually the complete Varèse canon), but Nagano doesn't sell the music short, and the recording copes equally well with the massive sonorities of Arcana and the intimacies of Octandre or Densité 21.5.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2005 ***

“The recording is excellent, the performers by the Polish Radio Symphony gusty and muscular” Sunday Times, 12th August 2001

“The intricacies of Stockhausen's Kontrapunkte now seem contrived by the pungent timbral interplay of Zeitmasze still compels - as does David Tudor in the convolutions of Klavierstück VI. Characterful works by Pousseur illumine a now-neglected figure, while those by Berio, Kagel and Nono are among the best of their era. Boulez is represented by grimly determined accounts of the Flute Sonatina and Structures I and by Loriod's formidable Second Sonata - galvanising its violent contrasts with a sweeping intensity.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006