If Ligeti or Stockhausen were computer nerds this might be what they'd make… astounding. In 1999, Stephen Vitiello was given a residency on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center (tower one). Gazing at the lights of New York City, he decided he wanted to translate sights into sound. To do so he simply used a photocell to record the luminosity of various points around him and through the windows. A computer assigned sound parameters to the collected data. This interesting process could have generated arid music if applied to the letter. Luckily, Vitiello had something else in mind. He treated the "Light Readings" (the title of three tracks on this CD) as sound sources.

The distinctive soundscape of this CD stems from the unique church interior at Løgumkloster in the south of Jutland, Denmark. Beneath the high vaulting, in the cloisters and in the small hidden spaces of the abbey, the flautist Eva Østergaard (b. 1966) has recorded a series of layers of sounds on fl utes of all sizes from piccolo to bass. The music was written specifi cally for Eva, the church and this CD by five Danish composers, all of whom explore the remotest reaches of the instruments and the building.

On the 'Sony Classical' label - In this world premiere recording, one of the greatest cellists of our time, Yo-Yo Ma performs the first ever Cello Concerto by internationally renowned composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Yo-Yo Ma performs this stunning concerto alongside the world’s most contemporary minded orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. Salonen has dedicated this work to Yo-Yo Ma. The Cello Concerto made its debut in Chicago, where it was performed by Yo-Yo Ma and conducted by Salonen. The concerto was lauded by critics who praised the collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and Salonen. The Cello Concerto will be performed in London at the Royal Festival Hall on 24th February 2019.

This portrait album of composer Colin Riley is a charmer: fun name, fun cover art, opening track a taut and wonky disco called Purl. But it’s more than that, too, and there’s something very endearing (and possibly very British?) about the way Riley deflects the beauty and sincerity at the heart of his pieces by giving them names such as Bob or A Cool Carfuffle, and framing his serious moments with music that fools around. Inspirations include Genesis, John Martyn and ; there’s a delicate set of Lyric Pieces, and a closing piano solo in dreamy soft-grain called . The title work is a collection of six miniatures, whose lopsided rhythms are cut with snippets of gentler stuff. The performances (violist Jessica Beeston, clarinettist Tom Lessels, pianist Kate Halsall and others) get the right balance of wry, fond, understated and slightly bonkers.

For Thierry Pécou, to live is to travel, and to travel is to write, as if to compose were at once to plunge into another universe, to take affective possession of the space, and, above all, to stand back and choose to live in the margins of one's everyday cultural milieu. The works presented on this CD bear witness to a constantly renewed artistic standpoint; they have been entrusted here to the expert fingers of another great traveller.

The Unchanging Sea is the latest collaboration in a long-running partnership between composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. This is their fifth work for orchestra over the course of nearly two decades; starting with "Decasia" in 2001, the two developed a style that combined Gordon’s haunting, hypnotic music with Morrison’s artful manipulations of old, deteriorating film reels to craft a dreamlike experience that’s by turns whimsical, nostalgic and inspiring. Co-commissioned and performed by the Seattle Symphony and featuring piano soloist Tomoko Mukaiyama, The Unchanging Sea flows from Gordon’s fascination with our connection to our watery source, in all its turbulence, majesty and mystery.

As the title and subtitle imply, this is a kind of greatest-hits album, with music selected by ECM label producer Manfred Eicher from the 12 albums on the label devoted to the music of Arvo Pärt. Pärt's music is so malleable that people tend to make their own versions of it rather than collect it, but if you wanted an anthology as a starter box, this would be the one to choose. Eicher has worked closely with Pärt since the 1980s, and he has indeed made a sensible "sequence" out of works that do not have a lot of contrast among them.

On the occasion of its 40th anniversary (1974-2014), the Arditti Quartet, one of the most famous groups in contemporary music, has chosen to record, for the second time and this is an occurrence sufficiently rare that it bears emphasizing , the complete string quartets of Brian Ferneyhough. The pieces on these discs immediately weave an auditory spell and well illustrate this composer's brand of complexity, i.e., writing reputed to be unplayable for the instrumentalists but providing a definite pleasure for the listener, caught up in the headiness of a universe without limits or vanishing point. This 3-CD set will not only be one of the indispensable releases of 2014 but also the best way to apprehend the music of a fundamental composer whose intense writing, emancipated heir of Schoenberg, remains radically expressive, chaotic in appearance but sublimated here by the freedom and excellence of the interpretation.

William Howard performs the solo piano music of Howard Skempton in a collection that includes Skempton’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, inspired by J.S. Bach’s example but in a contemporary style. Skempton’s piano miniatures are concise, crystalline gems: clear, colourful and bright. There is a neoclassical quality to Skempton’s Preludes and Fugues, which exude a serene, almost otherworldly atmosphere, tempered with a sense of intimacy and refinement. Each Prelude consists of a spare, canonic piece, and each Fugue is woven into an intricate but delicate texture of interlacing lines.

Third Sound, hailed as a “forward-looking, expert ensemble” (The New Yorker), presents its debut album, Heard In Havana, featuring music by ten living American composers. In November 2015, the American Composers Forum (ACF) sent Third Sound and a delegation of ten composers to Havana, Cuba, to present a program of contemporary American music at the Havana Contemporary Music Festival. The program, presented in Havana’s eighteenth-century Basílicia Menor de San Francisco de Asís, offered a unique snapshot of the vitality and diversity of the contemporary American musical landscape. The concert moreover represented an historic occasion: against the sociopolitical backdrop of normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba, Third Sound presented the first concert entirely comprising contemporary American music, and with all composers in attendance, to take place in Cuba since before the Cuban Revolution.

Piano music is central to Valentin Silvestrov’s output. With its frequent allusions to lingering recollections of the past, this programme presents an overview of various creative periods. It begins with the composer’s reworkings of youthful sketches (Naive Musik), followed by Der Bote (The Messenger) with its beautiful Mozartian theme leading into a sonatina in the style of the 18th century. After recent works from Silvestrov’s self–defined ‘Bagatelle’ period, the recording concludes with the striking Kitschmusik, which engages with the music of Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. The Two Waltzes are dedicated to Elisaveta Blumina.

The number of Aho recordings has grown substantially since my 2009 MusicWeb survey, The Music of Kalevi Aho. Initially, that focused on BIS releases, as the label’s championed this composer’s work from the start – eClassical lists 35 albums so far – but others are showing interest, too. Which is why we’ve now set up a dedicated, easy-reference index, with links to every single Aho review published by MWI. Our feisty Finn, 70 this year, is a fast worker – I reviewed three of his latest albums just a few months ago – so all credit to BIS for recording his new pieces with commendable speed. Even then, there’s still a lot waiting in the wings.

Ultraviolet is the first Warp album from New York-based composer, producer and keyboardist Kelly Moran, ripe with dazzling inflexions of jazz and dream pop, classical composition and black metal.

The Minimal Piano Collection for one piano (BC8551) ended with “In C” by Terry Riley. Many of the composers on this new 11 Cd box have stated that this particular piece was a starting point for them to compose in a new way, exploring the ways that were created, the spaces between the notes, the emptiness, the freedom. Elizabeth Bergmann & Marcel Bergmann, Tamara Rumiantsev and Sandra van Veen & Jeroen van Veen recorded 83 compositions. From two pianos up to six pianos, from Steve Reich ‘standard’ Pianophase to Six Pianos. On the included Cd-ROM you can find all the biographies, background information and some sheet music. Van Veen recorded many pieces on his own using multi track technique.

Narrow is the 2012 EP, or what she calls a mini-album, by Austrian artist Anja Plaschg, who goes under the name Soap&Skin. This is the follow-up to her debut album Lovetune For Vacuum but was said to have been written after the death of her father. This was released by Play It Again Sam Records.