Atopos Survey 4.

Atopos curates astonishing collections which must be sought out. Including this installment, we have covered everything that this unfamiliar label has released thus far.

Armchair Operas and Amusements 13.

An invigorating program featuring difficult works in the lied tradition.

String Theory 21: Mostly Viola(s)

Royer is an inspired Scelsi performer. He plays as if improvising, easing into Scelsi’s languid microtones with grace notes flicked away like involuntary twitches.

Piano Factory 16. / (Dis)Arrangements 9: Liszt and Wagner

Liszt’s last pieces reflect little interest in pyrotechnics or showy glamour. They are curious about harmony and the spiritual world; some touch on historical subjects, but most all are reflective, even world-weary.

IPC’s Acoustic Energizer and Disc Energizer

This stuff leaves the premises over my dead body.

Two ECM Beauties: Holliger and Lachenmann

No surprise, then, that a few highbrow composers whose methods derive in large measure from Europe’s postwar avant-garde strike an aesthetic posture of one-against-the-middlebrow-many.

The Year’s So Far Best

Mike Silverton [August 2001. Originally appeared in La Folia 3:4.] Heinz HOLLIGER: Schneewittchen (Snow White), opera in five scenes, with prologue and epilogue. Libretto adapted by Heinz Holliger from Robert Walser’s play Schneewittchen. Juliane Banse, soprano, Snow White; Cornelia Kallisch,

Scardanelli’s Motley: A Survey of Recent Releases

As the reader of La Folia 1:1 has already discovered, Signor Scardanelli is a gentleman of a delusional cast of mind.