Sardinian saxophonist Andrea Mocci, one of the most accomplished musicians of his generation, and the brilliant Japanese pianist Megumi Nakanomori, form Duo Vagues, and present their debut album Légende. Their cultural backgrounds and personalities are as distinct as the contrasting colouristic palettes of their instruments; the saxophone itself straddles the worlds of classical and jazz. Yet this CD represents a fusion of all these apparently conflicting elements, highlighting music’s power to unify cultures, timbres and genres.

Florent Schmitt’s Légende is at the heart of this disc and their formation as a duo. Its continuous motion, rising from moments of profound calm to ebullient overflowing crests, suggests “vagues” – waves, inspiring their choice of name.

Schmitt’s Légende spans lyricism and impetuosity, the saxophone’s long-breathed, virtuosic flourishes occasionally slipping into the smoky world of jazz, while the piano’s rich harmonies anticipate Messiaen. Jolivet’s Fantaisie-Impromptu reflects his immersion in both atonality and jazz, its sinuous saxophone line and enigmatic, tonally-ambiguous piano gestures juxtaposed with jaunty, jazzy material reminiscent of Gershwin. Milhaud, a master of comic irony, takes us on a witty adventure to South America in Scaramouche – the piece with which Andrea Mocci made his professional debut, in the prestigious Sala Verdi in Milan, in 2011. In common with Milhaud’s piece, Françaix’s 5 Danses Exotiques, dedicated to Marcel Mule (who premiered Schmitt’s Légende) embrace Latin American styles.

Creston’s debonair, vivacious Sonata is a piece which Duo Vagues has been playing for years, yet which always yields something new. Hindemith famously wrote sonatas for almost every orchestral instrument, although the Sonata recorded on this disc began life as a piece for alto horn. The saxophonist is called upon to read a poem by Hindemith during the piece, after which the two instruments are engaged in fascinating dialogue, and it is this sense of dialogue, between saxophone and piano, between different styles, and between the musicians themselves, that is so integral to this debut disc from Duo Vagues.

15 - Paul Creston - Sonata Op. 19 - I. With Vigor

Odradek Records is a democratic classical cooperative, non-profit and artist-controlled label and concert association, promoting new artists and fresh repertoire.

Entrance to our roster is through anonymous demo.

Our dream is utopian: to separate music-making from markets and create a just system of pure artistic meritocracy.


Odradek Records is not just a new record label. Odradek Records is the first wedge of a larger project, proposing a new way to produce and enjoy classical music. We think that the current model undermines the true essence and significance of music. We think that a model centered on just a few big names, the great concert halls, a limited repertoire that is necessarily restricted by the bonds of popularity--a model that makes its selection of new young performers from the anti-musical system of competitions, the success of which is often obtained through extravagant histrionics rather than the correctness or subtlety of interpretation--and finally, a model that is subject to the exploitation of the marketplace, and which obliges the majority of musicians to pay enormous sums to record CDs, for which the profits then go largely to the record company, thus depriving many very worthy but not wealthy musicians from the possibility of recording--is not only a model that is far from art, but is a model that even itself is in crisis. 

Ideally, music just as other primary goods, should not fall subject to the markets. We know that in a strict sense, this is utopian, but it is precisely this tension towards an unreachable utopia that guides our project.

Odradek Records is a non-profit seeking label. Once production and distribution expenses are recuperated, all of our proceeds go directly to the artist. Odradek Records selects its artists solely through the criterion of utmost quality of the recording and the interest of the proposed program. We don’t want to exclude, but rather include: we are not interested if you have won important competitions or not, neither if you have performed in important halls or signed with major labels. We are not interested in your age or where you come from. The only thing that interests us is whether you play your instrument to a very high and professional level. With us you can record Chopin, but you can also record: Berio, Scelsi, Copland, Carter, Webern, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Kurtag, Ives, and many others.

Our recording studio avails itself of the greatest technical instruments available today.

The distribution of our CDs is guided by an innovative criterion of transparency and flexibility in setting prices.
The rights of the composers and of the artist are protected by Creative Commons copyright (sometimes referred to as “copyleft” policy) because we want to render legal and free all those things that almost everybody already illegally does anyway.

We consider that the distribution of our music is not a one way street, but instead a dialogue. Only the presence of an active public gives true life to an artistic product. Write us. In the comments section you can leave opinions, suggestions, and criticisms of our music and our project. If you want to you can sign up as a “Friend of Project Odradek”, indicating your name, your profession, where you are from, and why you support Project Odradek. Send us your thoughts on the state of music, culture, and the arts: we’ll publish them on our blog.

If you like us, help us spread the word by linking to us from your blogs, sites, and through your social networks.

Odradek Records does not only produce CDs. We are convinced that the truest fruition of music happens in live concerts. For this reason we organize itinerant music festivals, moving from city to city, to promote our disks and music.

And finally, a word about our name: we borrow it from Kafka. Like the worried family man in Kafka’s tale, we are also worried. We are worried that music might become always more and more an odradek, an indefinable and incomprehensible being, whose voice sounds falsely, like the voice of one who is “without lungs”, a being without form, disturbingly replicating that which was once alive, that can plastically become whatever is wished for by those who posses the instruments of power and control. We wish for the cage-like railing surrounding the man of Kafka’s drawing to become instead an instrument to play - we would like to transform our prison into our liberty. 

We would like to restore music to its true role, that of artwork, and restore musical interpretation to its true function, the only one that opens itself towards the possibility of a future: that of a field of research.

Welcome to Project Odradek.