RAI SO - Xenakis's early orchestral works

The Guardian 60

Mode

Early orchestral works make up the latest release in Mode’s long-running Iannis Xenakis series. All three require enormous forces – Terretektorh and Nomos Gamma from the 1960s are scored for 88 and 98 instrumentalists respectively, with the audience dispersed in and around the musicians, while Metastaseis A, completed in 1954 when Xenakis was still working in Le Corbusier’s architectural studio, is the first version of a piece that became one of his earliest successes in its revised form.

The musical voice – raw, uncompromising, sometimes brutally physical and direct – is unmistakable in each of the works. Even in Metastaseis A, Xenakis already laid claim to his own distinctive musical landscape, but it’s the sound world that he created in Terretektorh that is the most striking A hail of percussive sounds played by the whole orchestra – from whips, maracas and woodblocks – gives way to bird whistles, as if the listener is at the centre of a vicious storm.