Have there been any Great Modern Classical Record released so far this century?

You're up against Bradford. You have no chance.

bradford? you must be having a laugh...

a veteran of trying to impress arty chicks, i have managed to acquire a pile of this weird-ass bullshit. so, assuming you meant the 20th century:

stravinsky -- rite of spring: you'll never need math rock again. then, if you were smart(er than i was) you probably never needed it in the first place. anyway, pagan virgin gets sacrificed while dissonance bounds and crashes faster than you can say "bugs bunny." smoke and flames. all right.

pierre boulez -- piano sonatas nos 1-3: lots of well-placed space between alternately gentle and spiky passages. cathartic like vodka. well, close.

boulez -- le marteau sans maitre: arty chick howls and moans to koto, guitar, violin played like a guitar, and flute, and some other cool instruments. easier to get into if you're pissed off.

john cage -- sonatas and interludes for prepared piano: guy lays stuff on top of piano strings and then plays. spacious and sparkly and gentle and meditative.

edgard varese -- deserts: stark and lonely like its title. more industrial than a pressing plant. more electro than a power grid. snazzy transitions from orchestral bits to tape bits.

varese -- density 21.5 (i hope that's the right number): solo flute piece. pretty and lyrical without tunes. you can get all the guy's collected works as a 2-cd set.

krzysztof penderecki -- threnody for the victims of hiroshima: the pitches of the strings are chosen so that their resonances cause sounds like screams and shit. cool violin noise. check out _fluorescences_ and _string quartet no 2_ too.

la monte young -- well-tuned piano: hell's angel dude with hottie model on his arm. beautiful noodling on a specially tuned piano that lets him get intense resonance effects. skip hour 1.

la monte young & the theatre of eternal music -- early tapes of stuff like "the over day" and "early tuesday morning blues": trippy sax jams while john cale and the hottie hold a drone.

terry riley -- in c: tripped-out, pretty, and uplifting jam. and it's catchy and has a good beat.

philip glass -- two pages: you know that clapping game where you sit in a circle and someone starts a pattern and everyone needs to make it more complicated by adding stuff to the end? sort of like that but on organs and saxes.

steve reich -- tehillim: sort of a cross between an african drumming circle and a medieval choir. pretty.

glenn branca -- symphonies 3 & 6: like a million guitars on fire. in hell.

gyorgy ligeti -- violin concerto: normal in some ways except that it gets pounding and screeching and intense. not that normal on the whole, i guess, except that it's well-structured and has an overall dramatic framework.

Sundar: this is total anti-chick music. Have you actually everv impressed ANY girl, arty or otherwise, with this kind of stuff? I love all the above (except Glass, possibly), but — to my lifelong dismay — I'm only a bloke.

PS I think Geordie actually did mean the 21st century. My first pedant-pervert's instinct was to attempt to point out that it doesn't actually start until Jan 1, 2002 — and in fact, now I'm off to spread exactly that rumour.

2002? Please explain.

Actually, ignore that last post. I'm tired and didn't read your post properly. Excuses excuses...

try goretki's(sp?) symphonies of sorrow

Cage: Asphodel records Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music, and 103. Great driving music!!!

Marc Anthony Turnage - get's bonus points for added swearing.

If you want to impress the chicks try Ligeti, it worked for Nicole Kidman by all accounts.

btw - jerry hall has endorsed the Toon as her choice for city of culture 2008 [but were still not gonna go to her play]

I like Sundar's list. I would also throw in Henryk Górecki. And Civilization Phaze III and The Yellow Shark (from you- know-who).

Oh yeah, let's not forget Prokofiev, von Webern, and Schoenberg.

If Jonathan Richman is to be believed, you just need to hang out at the Cezanne exhibit at the local museum.

sorry, lets try that with some context, shall we.

...needs a new angle to impress them Nordic art-chicks
If Jonathan Richman is to be believed, you just need to hang out at the Cezanne exhibit at the local museum.

Ah, much better.

"Harmonium" by John Adams. Adams is the man. Groundbreaking by absorbing all forms of music and fusing it together. Avant AND emotional.

Surely you're all overlooking HMS Fable by Shack.

- most of these people are living in the twentieth century. I hear the new Stockhausen is worthwhile. Did John Adams' Pieta thing come out this century?

Webern! The string quartets and string trios

Morton Feldman - Why Patterns?
Pauline Oliverios - heard one of her albums with the deep listening band that was awesome.

http://www.musicmavericks.org/composers/
This has quite a bit of info on a lot of modern american composers

revive! 5 for the nu-millenium to impress those at art chiXors with!

wolfgang rihm - jagden und formen (ensemble My) (2002, i think)
richard barrett - opening of the mouth (elison elsemble) (2000)
helmut lachenmann 'das madchen mit...' (musical theatre) 2 CD set on kairos (2002)
michael finnisy 'red earth' for orchestra on NMC (2001)
earle brown 'chamber music' on matchless (2003)

I could prob do 10-20 more I think but that means checking dates etc...maybe later.

i second the rihm. but i certainly don't second the notion that this is enough to impress art chicks...

luciano berio - 'voci' (kim kashkashian)
elliott carter - symphonia: 'sum fluxae pretium spei' / clarinet concerto (michael collins, bbc so, cond. oliver knussen)
per nørgård - symphony no. 6, 'at the end of the day' / terrains vagues (danish national so, cond. thomas dausgaard)
peteris vasks - string quartet no. 4 (kronos quartet)
einojuhani rautavaara - symphony no. 8, 'the journey' / harp concerto (marielle nordman, helsinki po, cond. leif segerstam)
valentin silvestrov - leggiero, pesante
ligeti, dusapin, berio, kurtág, dillon, sciarrino - works for solo viola (garth knox)
györgy kurtág - 'signs, games and messages' / 'hölderlin-gesänge' / '...pas à pas - nulle part...' (kurt widmer, et al.)
kaija saariaho - l'aile du songe

there's more, i'm sure...

def get on to some of those ywbs.

five more:

klaus lang 'sei-jaku' (arditti str quartet, edition rz, 2002)
harrison birtwistle 'pulse shadows' (nash ensemble/arditti str quartet/ claron mcfadden, teldec, 2002)
scelsi 'string quretets, string trio, khoom' (arditti et al, montaigne, 2002)
morton feldman 'neither' "opera" (words samuel beckett, col legno, 2000)
james tenney 'forms 1-4' for ensemble (hat hut, 2001)

Albinoni's "Adagio" is beautiful.

And that's it, I think....

The classical music of the past 100 years has been written by the likes of Paul McCartney, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach etc.

you mean barber...

and do you not like sibelius or mahler or vaughan williams or ravel or britten?

Don't ask. The dude knows as much about classical music as a dog knows about rugby.

I meant Barber, yes.

Mahler didn't compose much in this century. As for the rest: Lack of melodic and harmonic qualities made them completely unlistenable. Just like rap and funk.

"Mahler didn't compose much in this century"

Symphony No. 4 (1899–1901)
Symphony No. 5 (1901–1902)
Symphony No. 6 (1903–1904)
Symphony No. 7 (1904–1905)
Symphony No. 8 (1906)
Symphony No. 9 (1909–1910)
Symphony No. 10 (1910)

Das Lied von der Erde (1907–1909)
Kindertotenlieder (1901–1904)
Ruckert Lieder (1901–1902)

In other words, all his important works barring symphonies 2, 3 and 4 were composed in the 20th century. Your opinions can be as wrongheaded as you want them to be, the facts have to be right.

"As for the rest", if you can say that Sibelius, Vaughan Williams and Ravel lack those qualities that obsess you so, you're simply an idiot.