Mario Davidovsky: Salvos - Chamber Music

I think it's high time some Mario Davidovsky was posted on here. The Argentine-born Davidovsky is one of the giants of the American Avant-Garde, a pioneer of electronic music at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, and the protégé of Edgard Varèse. This music is heavy, intellectually-charged stuff; not for the faint of mind. Brought to you by one of New York's finest boutique recording studios, Arabesque Recordings.

"Mario Davidovsky's reputation rests securely on the innovative electronic works he composed in the 1960s, most notably his Synchronisms. Yet Davidovsky's instrumental music deserves equal appreciation and deeper investigation, for his chamber works are just as fascinating as the early tape explorations but are sadly underperformed outside academia and rarely recorded. The pieces on this 2004 release from Arabesque show Davidovsky's heightened sensitivity to timbres and textures, and his delicate sonorities and angular lines are transparently colored and expressively shaded. His language is still avant-garde – short gestures, ambiguous rhythms, varied attacks, and sudden changes of dynamics – and Davidovsky has refined his music to what might seem an extreme distillation of his earlier methods. Even so, there is a wealth of ideas in all five pieces; and though this music seems spare and focused in the moment, it is not rarefied in content or emotion. The Empyrean Ensemble performs Simple Dances (1991-1999), the Quartetto (1987), Salvos (1986), and the String Trio (1982) with intensity and agility; and with virtuoso soprano Susan Narucki in the flamboyantly disjointed Cantione Sine Textu (2001), the musicians convey the full range of Davidovsky's expression. Arabesque's recording is fine."

-Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide

Mario Davidovsky
Simple Dances, Cantione Sine Textu, Quartetto, Salvos, String Trio

1) Simple Dances - Solo
2) Simple Dances - Pas de Deux
3) Simple Dances - Introduction / Waltz
4) Simple Dances - Sarabande
5) Simple Dances - Marsch
6) Simple Dances - Tango
7) Cantione Sine Textu; for soprano, flute/alto flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, guitar, doublebass
8) Quartetto; for flute, violin, viola, cello
9) Salvos; for flute/alto flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, harp, violin, cello
10) String Trio

Tracks 1-6 and 8-10: Empyrean Ensemble
Track 7: Susan Narucki, soprano; Empyrean Ensemble

Files encoded as FLAC.



EDIT:For those who are having trouble extracting these files, I've uploaded a new 7z package of 205 MB on rapidshare. It can be found here: http://rapidshare.com/files/151556646/Davidovsky.7z