An Iannis Xenakis Playlist

This year marks the centenary of Iannis Xenakis, the Romanian-born Greek-French composer who died in 2001. Architect, mathematician, communist, and composer of both instrumental and electronic works, his music plowed an idiosyncratic furrow in the history of the European avant-garde. 

The centenary has happily meant retrospectives of his work. The most substantial was Révolutions Xenakis at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (for whose opening Xenakis created one of his “Polytopes” in 1977), curated by his daughter, in collaboration with the Philharmonie de Paris. Xenakis is performed too seldom in the United Kingdom, but this year has seen focus on his music from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and at the BBC Proms. 

On October 8, London’s Southbank Center marks his centenary with performances of his music by many of its leading exponents, including the JACK quartet, percussionist Colin Currie, and the London Sinfonietta. Xenakis’ music can be quite forbidding; he was forbiddingly prolific too, certainly compared to his colleague Pierre Boulez. This playlist offers a bird’s eye plan—an architect’s drawing—of the edifice of his music.