NY Times on Contemporary Composers

[DudeAsInCool]

Adventures Outside the Classical Canon: Pathfinding Composers

It is hard to know, anymore, exactly how to define contemporary Western classical music. How recent does a work have to be? For that matter, how Western does it have to be, with, for example, the stimulating incursions Chinese composers have made in the United States? And does the term "classical" even retain any significance as the music returns to its roots, in a sense, becoming ever more saturated with pop gestures and idioms? However you choose to define it, "serious" music seems livelier and more variegated today than it has in many a decade, a trend the classical music critics of The New York Times are eager not only to acknowledge but also to encourage. And so, with rough justice, we present for your consideration and listening pleasure critics' selections of CD's by a handful of composers who we think deserve broader recognition, however disparate the starting points. They are Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Alfred Schnittke, John Corigliano and Stephen Hartke. Some are alive, some dead, and there is little to unite them in terms of age or nationality. But you have to start somewhere, and all at least helped set the table for 21st-century music; some are still partaking of the feast. JAMES R. OESTREICH

Here are some favorite contemporary recordings of the classical-music critics of The New York Times.

http://nytimes.com/2005/08/12/arts/music/12comp.html

[noctum]

thanks for the article