New Year, New Works!

Jan. 10, 2013, 2:14 p.m.

Happy new year from PSNY! 2013 is shaping up to be a great season, with over 30 new works recently added to the catalogue, all available as digital editions for immediate download. Audiences in New York will be able to hear works by two PSNY composers performed live at Carnegie Hall this season, as well. On January 18th, the American Composers' Orchestra performs the World Premiere of Kate Soper's now is forever for Soprano and Orchestra; and on April 2nd, pianist Jonathan Biss and the Elias String Quartet perform the New York Premiere of Timothy Andres' "Piano Quintet," a co-commission by Carnegie Hall. Be sure to attend these performances if you can! 

Some standouts from this windfall of new works include pieces by both well-established and up-and-coming composers ranging from Andrew Norman to Fred Lerdahl, Morton Subotnick to Scott Wollschleger. Many of these pieces are excellent additions to repertoire, and are standouts at every performance. Some highlights: 

 Andrew Norman, Gran Turismo. What’s better than an Andrew Norman piece for solo strings, such as Sabina? An Andrew Norman piece for 8 violins, of course! Gran Turismo is quickly becoming an internationally renowned piece, a virtuoso show-stopper perfect for orchestras and chamber ensembles alike.  

Kamran Ince, Symphony in Blue. Ince’s alchemical melding of Western concert music with Turkish influence manifests itself in his newest solo piano work, Symphony in Blue. Premiered in Turkey in June, 2012, Symphony in Blue was commissiomned by the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art to honor the rare viewing of Burhan Dogancay's painting, “Symphony in Blue” (Mavi Senfoni, 1987).

Morton Subotnick, Liquid Strata. Subotnick, now the acknowledged godfather of electronic music, composed Liquid Strata for piano and electronic ghost score in 1977. We are extremely pleased to offer, for the first time ever, Subotnick’s electro-acoustic pieces for sale through PSNY, with all required software patches included.  

Chris Cerrone, Memory Palace. This work, appropriately listed near Subotnick’s, also includes electronics to accompany a solo performer, in this case a percussionist. Cerrone has laid out detailed instructions for this piece on the construction of home-made percussion instruments, which constitute the majority of this work’s instrumentation. In addition to these homemade instruments, field recordings give this work an extra layer of sonic activity, adding to its radically subjective aesthetic.  

Scott Wollschleger, Brontal No. 3. Wollschleger’s conception of time, owing strongly to French theorist Gilles Deleuze, frames his melodic lines with an aspect he describes as “Brontal”:  strange, primordial, monolithic, and of odd proportions. This piece, for small ensemble, deconstructs melody and refrain with a rarefied sensitivity to time, a slowly-recurring, ephemeral birdsong. 

Lei Liang, Lakescape II and Dialectal Percussions. Two percussion works by Liang highlight his involvement with the dramatization of the grey area between music and language. Dialectical Percussions, ideally performed on a dark stage with low blue lighting, maps the Peking dialect onto the percussionist, creating a monodrama of “musical dialects.”  

Fred Lerdahl, Fantasy Etudes. Lerdahl’s Etudes, scored for small ensemble, form an intelocking set of 12 studies verging on the fantastic. Characteristic of Lerdahl’s chamber style, these etudes begin with seemingly simple figurations and evolve into complex variations, eventually “collapsing under the weight of its elaborations” as a new etude begins.