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Conlon Nancarrow MDG 619 1548-2 This CD represents a defining moment in instrumental playing development in this new century. Nancarrow despaired of performing musicians being capable of following the complexity of his musical thinking, so he devoted his later life to printing out his musical conceptions by punching holes in paper rolls for pianolas, which reproduced his daunting rhythmic creations The present disc has several nostalgic connections for us. It is dedicated to Jan Wolff founder of De Ijsbreker in The selection is nicely varied with slow pieces as well as vertiginous speedsters, and there are two part studies to interpose some aural relaxation. A moving picture is better than a hundred words, so see these marvellous players in an immaculate rendering of Nancarrow's Study no 3 on YouTube. One of the most exciting discs of the year, surely, and a challenge for advanced wind students at the colleges. See also: Pianolas & Reproducing Pianos Calefax Live: Bach Goldberg Variations BWV988 (arr. Raaf Hekkema) Wigmore Hall Monday 22 June 2009 This was an exceptional concert, which received astonished acclamation from the BBC's regular lunchtime audience. This famous and popular work has been performed and recorded in many arrangments, several of them reviewed by Musical Pointers. Calefax's version is one of the most attractive, the contrasts in timbres making the counterpoint easy to follow. Better than a verbal description of the delights in waiting, listen to Variation 1 taken from Goldberg Variation Highlights - www.calefax.com and then see an amazing balletic version of the Goldbergs with Calefax on stage at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbBIHdWxy8. Calefax's commercial recording of the Goldbergs has not yet been released, but this BBCR3 transmission can be heard until the end of next week on BBCR3 Listen Again at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00l8rsy/Radio_3_Lunchtime_Concert_Calefax_Wind_Ensemble/ We have been provided with a set of this great ensemble's CDs, illustrating their development over the last fifteen years or so. Bach's Art of Fugue, Rameau, Debussy & Ravel; each one is a delight, culminating with the mind boggling achievement ofbringing to concert life Nancarrow's dizzyingly complex Studies for Player Piano. Repeating what I wrote when reviewing that landmark disc: A moving picture is better than a hundred words, so see these marvellous players in an immaculate rendering of Nancarrow's Study no 3 on YouTube. Follow my links and enjoy ! Calefax has given us enjoyment commensurate Peter Grahame Woolf TWO MORE PIANO GOLDBERGS If you like your Bach on piano (I don't much) Calefax Quintet's colleague Ivo Janssen is pretty good [VOID 9801] and so is Johan Hugsson [pictured], who quaintly justifies his CD because on piano "it is visually attractive as you have to cross your hands" ! He had better put it onto DVD? PGW
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at superhuman playing velocities. He never envisaged live performances by real musicians, but Calefax Reed Quintet shows here that now it is not beyond possibility for well trained musicians. 
Amsterdam, an important venue for new music where we have spent many happy hours. Upon his resignation in 2008, Calefax played some of this music by Wolff's favourite composer, to whom he had been introduced by Yvar Mikhashoff, co-director of London's Almeida Festival of Contemporary Music, which was important to me in the '80s and where I met Nancarrow. 
