FRITZ BRUN: Symphony No. 9; Aus dem Buch Hiob (Symphonische Dichtung). Moscow Symphony Orchestra c. Adriano. Guild GMCD 7306.

SCHOECK: String Quartet No. 2 in C major. FRITZ BRUN: String Quartet No. 3 in F major. Amar Quartett. Musiques Suisses MGB CD 6238.

HANS SCHAEUBLE: String Quartet op.19. MEINRAD SCHÜTTER: String Quartet. ERICH SCHMID: String Quartet op. 4. casalQUARTETT Zurich. Guild GMCD 7303.

This article is devoted to the music of Paweł Szymański. The author is convinced that an intertextual reading of his music is the most compelling one. Taking into consideration Szymański's two-level technique she interprets his works by means of categories elaborated in the field of literature: intertextuality exponent, interpretant, and text characterised by intertextual play. In the second part of the article two different works are discussed, the first representing the algorithmic, and the second the improvisational method of composing. The author concludes that these works are deeply rooted in tradition and, at the same time, are modern, as well as original, with the interpretants constituting the major source of their originality.

Compared to the central figures of French spectral music, Horaţiu Rădulescu has received relatively little critical attention. Contrasting temperaments, writing styles and surface musical features have led to a tendency to place Rădulescu in opposition to Grisey in particular. In this article I analyse some of Rădulescu's theoretical writing and demonstrate important shared values with the spectral ‘mainstream’. I then examine Das Andere for solo viola, Op. 49 (1983) in detail and compare it to Grisey's solo viola masterpiece, Prologue (1976). In so doing I hope not only to reveal the inner workings of one of Rădulescu's most compelling and approachable pieces, but also to show some common strategies with Grisey, regardless of their radically different aural results.

This article is an introduction to the graphical impetus in the music of Kenneth Hesketh (b. 1968), from around 2012 to the present day, including his recent work, Viae (2020). Through examination of Hesketh's graphical control of a number of musical parameters, the article will demonstrate that the idea of a ‘musical ekphrasis’ can be extended through the incorporation of spatial aspects in determinate music to result in what the author deems a graphical ekphrasis. Whilst in no way exhaustive in its exploration of Hesketh's multi-parametric approach to composition, the article provides an analysis of selected compositional methodologies relating to both composition design and audience communication, situating them alongside other contemporary musical examples and trends.

• LaMonte Young Rodney Lister

• Skalkottas's 12-Note Music Guy Rickards

• Elliott Carter Christian Carey

• Voicing ‘Pierrot’ Stephanie Power

The re-discovery and recent commercial release, on Regis/Forum, of one of my earliest performances of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, cannot help but evoke a mood of piquant personal reminiscence. The recording was made in 1967 at Olympic Studios in London, roughly two years after I first became acquainted with this riveting, endlessly compelling and many-layered masterpiece. The mid-1960s were marked by optimism, eager creative responses to the challenge of the new, and a spirit of idealism that is perhaps difficult to recapture in today's more commercially-driven world.

THE MILKEN ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN JEWISH MUSIC. Naxos American Classics 8.559400 through 8.559425 and upwards.

• Nicholas Maw's ‘Sophie's Choice’ Paul Conway

• Morton Feldman Colin Clarke

• Richard Ayres Peter Reynolds

• Elinor Remick Warren Bret Johnson

• Thomas Adès Paul Conway

• Further reviews Peter Palmer, Colin Clarke, Guy Rickards, Paul Conway, Calum MacDonald, Bret Johnson

Gerard Schurmann was born of Dutch parents in the former Dutch East Indies in 1924, but spent more than 40 years, including the most formative period of his musical life, in England before moving to the US in 1981. Even during his years in the Netherlands as orchestral conductor with the Dutch Radio in his early twenties, he maintained an apartment in London, sometimes commuting to his place of work in Hilversum. His experience was similar to Bernard van Dieren, another Dutch-born composer who lived in England, although not for as many years as Schurmann: Holland has made no particular move to claim either as a Dutch composer. It was in England that Schurmann developed his skills and persona as a musician, after arriving as a teenager in 1941.

Ligeti has largely been understood as an opponent of serialism, though he was deeply entangled with the mid-century Darmstadt avant-garde in the late 1950s and 1960s. As such, appearances of twelve-tone techniques in his works are typically dismissed as borrowed, superficial or juvenile. This article synthesises previous research, original analysis and sketch materials to reassess Ligeti's engagement with dodecaphonic techniques. The Kyrie movement is steeped in Webernian dodecaphony, from the foundational plan to the surface expression of the vocal melodies. Ligeti's use of palindromes also harkens to Bartók's music. In this sense, the Kyrie movement of the Requiem can be understood as a eulogy for both Webern and Bartók, as well as for the dodecaphonic techniques that intrigued Ligeti even as his compositional technique moved far beyond them.

Despite an ever-expanding body of literature on Adès's engagement with the music of the past, his use of traditional formal models has attracted little critical comment. That which does exist privileges the relatively straightforward surface articulation of his musical forms over more nuanced accounts. In the case of Adès's sonata forms, this has had at least two consequences for our understanding of his music: first, that too strong an emphasis on syntactical groupings occludes what is happening discursively in the music; and second, that ‘textbook’ models are not the only formal tradition with which Adès's sonata forms engage. Rather, his sonatas bear traces of a rotational model that recalls the examples of Janáček and Sibelius. This article considers how Adès's sonata forms can be constituted not as neo-classical prefabrications but, a posteriori, as a practice that emerges across his career – from the Chamber Symphony and …but all shall be well to the Piano Quintet and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra – from an interaction between traditional syntactical groupings, thematic procedures and tonal plots.

This article seeks to initiate discourse around the vibrant and somewhat uncharted electroacoustic weave that significantly contributes to Ireland's musical tapestry through a consideration of six diverse threads: Softday, Jennifer Walshe, Karen Power, Linda Buckley, Fergal Dowling and Jonathan Nangle. Investigation of Ireland's recent electroacoustic scene will confirm that an emerging DIY aesthetic aligns with international trends of the past decade, with pop-up events, improvisation groups, experimental music collectives and intermedia festivals providing avenues for collaborative and creative expression. It will provide contrasting, yet interconnected examples of what will be termed ‘DIYing’ including a discussion of influences, concepts, practices and brief analyses of works. It is hoped that this article will see the beginning of a wider acknowledgement of the rich musical dialogues that are taking place.

This article takes up Rebecca Saunders’ comments on the significance of timbre in her work to develop a timbre-centred analytical technique for two of her compositions, Ire (2012), for cello and ensemble, and Still (2011), for violin and orchestra. Two overarching principles are identified: the organisation of the pieces’ sounds into clearly differentiated categories, which can also overlap in different ways, and the use of a phrase-based logic in the pieces’ formal construction. Alongside the timbral construction, stable pitches acquire formal significance by virtue of their rarity and conspicuousness. I also elaborate on the ways in which perceptual ambiguity is fruitfully exploited in these works.