Thanks for reviving Cardew's Bun no.2. Some bloke named Dave Smith made a 2-piano version a few years back.

I'll catch up with these over the weekend. In the meantime, many thanks for the Blomdahl which reminded me how delightfully perverse this composer can be. I was less impressed by the Banks: his "serious" 12-notery often sounds as though he would really prefer to be writing more jazzy numbers - as indeed he did at times.

It's not a usual conducting technique, but Nicolas Slominsky certainly did it when conducting certain Ives pieces, most probably Putnam's Camp from 3 places in New England which contains a passage for two parts of the orchestra playing in different tempi.

Many thanks for that, Gerald! I look forward to hearing more of your collection.

On the subject of Blomdahl, Aniara can be located within the following stash -
http://rapidshare.com/users/8RDGKF

The inaccuracy of that statement is borne out by Ian's post above. It may not affect how the work is performed today, but knowing about the circumstances of its inception certainly aids "insight" I would have thought.


20th century performances may be different, but what's your evidence for denying that "great performances" of these works didn't happen earlier?

Sorry, I don't buy that at all! No composer is "ahead of his time".