Øyvind Brandtsegg’s “Nancarrow Biotope” reviewed by Vital Weekly

Conlow Nancarrow “was an American-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1956. Nancarrow is best remembered for his Studies for Player Piano, being one of the first composers to use auto-playing musical instruments, realizing their potential to play far beyond human performance ability. He lived most of his life in relative isolation, and did not become widely known until the 1980s.” Brandtsegg orchestrated this piece for the Pipe Organ, Disklavier and electronics. It is a combination of “mechanic instruments in combination with improvisation software”. This cassette contains two recordings of this piece, in Stavanger and Trondheim. It would be great if I could say something about the original about this version, but sadly I can’t. I have very little idea about the working of classical music, that can’t be secret I would think, and so it is not easy to review this work. The seventeen pieces are in total some seventy-five minutes of music of highly rhythmic and dense church organ sounds, perhaps more so than I would think this is a work of software. The piano is replaced by the Disklavier and it is all very modern classical music to these ears. It is probably great music, but a bit too far outside the scope of Vital Weekly. (FdW)

via Vital Weekly