For some time now, I have been saddened by the seeming disappearance of the "true" musical avant-garde. Yes, there have been some promising new releases from young composers eager to experiment; Rebecca Saunders, Jason Eckardt, and some of Matthias Pintscher's work come to mind, though it's difficult to tell whether these efforts will be sustained. Luciano Berio is dead.

BIS presents its first disc of works by this fascinating contemporary Icelandic composer. One of the label’s most innovative projects ever undertaken, the disc uniquely offers a variety of works composed specifically for the CD medium. Ingolfsson was closely involved in the making of this CD, through both the recording session and editing stages, and the decisions that he made throughout this process have undoubtedly shaped the end result we have here.

After what seems like years of delay, Mode has released this CD of chamber and vocal music in time for Elliott Carter's 95th birthday, which fell on Dec. 11, 2003. It was worth the wait. The Quintet for Piano and Strings (1997) is one of the two or three pinnacles of Carter's prolific eighties. Though undeniably an example of the his late style, it harks back to the First Quartet (1951!) in its long-lined writing for strings. The music is expansive and concise, light-hearted and dramatic all at once, and it is played to perfection by Ursula Oppens and the Arditti Quartet, the performers for whom it was written.

Hilda Paredes provides a family portrait on Cuerdas del destino, her latest CD. The works are written for violinist Irvine Arditti, her husband, countertenor Jake Arditti, her son, and the Arditti Quartet, with whom she has enjoyed more than twenty years of artistic partnership. This CD is also significant in that it celebrates the Arditti’s fortieth anniversary.

The German-French composer Mark Andre (b.1964) is one of the most important representatives of New Music. His twelve "Miniatures" for string quartet were composed in 2014/17 as a commission from the Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio's "musica viva", the Festival d'Automne à Paris and the ProQuartet-CEMC, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Andre created his organ work "Himmelfahrt" (Ascension), funded by the Siemens Music Foundation, in 2018 on behalf of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The orchestral work woher…wohin was written between 2015 and 2017 as a composition commission by BR's "musica viva" in conjunction with the Happy New Ears prize for composition from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. The live recordings of all three works are now being released in the CD edition of Bavarian Radio's "musica viva" concert series on BR-KLASSIK.