Iannis Xenakis - Dikhthas

Dikhthas, for violin & piano (1979) Claude Helffer, piano Irvine Arditti, violin Iannis Xenakis is surely one of the most "unclassical" of composers; the combination of violin and piano suggests Beethoven or Mozart more readily than Xenakis, who rarely employs conventional instrumental groupings or uses instruments in a conventional manner. Dikhthas, "a dual entity made up of two natures," was written in 1979, between Ikhoor (for string trio) and Mists (for piano); strangely, it is both more classical-sounding and more wide-ranging than either of those works. The music is built from dense, polyphonic "arborescent" textures (most often heard in the piano) and from pulsating repeated chords or arpeggiated ostinati based on a limited set of pitches spread over a wide register (more characteristic of the violin). The second section is a long variation on a single note via changes of dynamics, articulations, and, in the violin, microtonal fluctuations of pitch. As brief flurries of scalar activity become more numerous, the texture begins to shift. Eventually, the violin slides away from the central pitch with a series of wild glissando oscillations up and down the strings. As the piano and violin trade flourishes, the music shifts into a quasi-tonal passage of interlocking ostinati, briefly reminiscent, perhaps, of the sonatas of Beethoven. As the violin breaks away into double-stop alternations of different perfect fourths, the piano plays more arborescent passages, settling...