CHRISTIAN WOLFF (b.1934): Tilburys 1-3, Keyboard Miscellany, A Piano Piece, Snowdrop.

Description: One of the primary figures of the New York School of indeterminacy, Wolff 's interpretation of the tenets of that approach to composition has been to notate fairly explicitly - not with graphics or complete improvisatory freedom - but to leave major aspects of the performance of the notated material to the discretion of the performer. For example, a gesture will be written out in conventional notation, but which clef the notes are in is not specified. So it is with these piano works. Small sequences of notes, which can be scales, intervals, or snatches of melodic material are presented floating, as it were, in free space. Rzewski described Wolff's music appositely when he said 'Weird little tunes, sounding as though they had been beamed at some remote point in the universe and then bounced back again as a kind of intergalactic mutant music; recognizable melodic and rhythmic patterns, somehow sewn together in monstrous pairings'. Sabine Liebner (piano).