"Kwon Younghee" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >Can anyone recomemend a recording of contemporary music composer? I >would like listen to the music at first, but I have no idea about that. The clown prince of Alternative Vienna, HK Gruber is probably the most consistently surprising composer working today: his masterpiece-to-date (a self-proclaimed pan-demonium for chansonnier, toy instruments & ensemble), Frankenstein!!, is available in English & German versions on EMI. HE Zhanhao & ZHU Jian'er are two very different PRChinese composers based in Shanghai: HE (as you may already know, Chinese names are commonly transliterated in English in CLEMENTS Robert format) is an eclectic melodist & the coauthor of the popular ZHU Yingtai & LIANG Shanpo/The Butterfly Lovers concerto (multiple recordings; including a startlingly good one - if splendidly nonChinese in idiom - by Vanessa-Mae); ZHU is a major new (but hardly young - his Cultural Revolution-inspired 1st symphony premiered when the composer was 60yrs of age) symphonist of the Shostakovich school (Marco Polo). (Also DSCH-inspired - but officially retired for serious health reasons - is the dean of English symphonists, Sir Malcolm Arnold. Best known as a composer of popular miniatures, Arnold's symphonies are a very different kettle of rallentendo indeed: multiple recordings of these works are available on Naxos, Conifer, Chandos & EMI. The shattering - & supposedly unperformable - 9th symphony on Naxos is as dark a place to start as any on these musical maps of hell) From the nothing succeeds like excess school, the Greek song writer (& national hero) Mikis Theodorakis has written some mighty concert scores, mostly for massed voices & large orchestra: the Canto General from texts by Pablo Neruda is the best known (a fine version available on Intuition) is the best known & probably also the best; although his ballet Alexis Zorba (Theodorakis penned the famous Zorba's Dance from the film Zorba the Greek) is also excellent. At the extreme opposite end of the scale, Australian maverick Ian Shanahan writes serialist scores for recorders. Serious fun.... All the best, Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>