On December 11, 1980 Eliane Radigue performed live on KPFA. Her full performance is included here, remastered, on two compact discs. Upon hearing these performances for the first time in many years Radigue declared them to be the best versions she'd ever heard. Included are full in-studio performances of Chry-ptus (1971), her first work for modular synthesizer, and the world premiere of parts one and three of Tryptych (1978).
Radigue's sublime renderings of these major pieces are full of illusory stasis, slow change and dense, slow motion drone that has characterized her pioneering electronic work. These pieces move like a river with currents shifting beneath the surface. While you can't quite distinguish the individual components you get a clear feeling of motion and change.
Éliane Radigue (born 1932 in Paris) is considered one of the most innovative and influential contemporary composers, from her early electronic music through to her acoustic work of the last fifteen years. Influenced by musique concrète and shaped by regular sojourns in the United States, where she discovered analogue synthesisers, her work unfolds an intensity which is at once subtle and monumental. Through her deep reflections on sound and listening, not only her music but also her working methods have come to shape a widely resonating set of new parameters for working with sound as musical material.
