PENTATONE to Release SPACES Compilation of World Premiere Recordings
The album includes contributions from Yang Bao, Sam Perkin, Stefania de Kenessey, and Kian Ravaei, with liner notes from managing director Sean Hickey.
PENTATONE will release SPACES, a compilation of world premiere recordings, on 4 September 2026, as part of the label's 25th anniversary celebrations. The collection brings together contemporary works by composers from across the globe, ranging from established names such as Anna Clyne, Donnacha Dennehy, George Lewis, and Sarah Kirkland Snider to emerging voices such as Zoe Yost.
From established names such as Anna Clyne, Donnacha Dennehy, George Lewis, and Sarah Kirkland Snider to emerging voices such as Zoe Yost, SPACES reflects the diversity of music being created today and PENTATONE's commitment to giving new music a place at the heart of classical recording.
The collection was shaped through recommendations from leading music publishers, as well as through PENTATONE's existing relationships with composers including Yang Bao and Sam Perkin, who were invited to contribute new works. Alongside more established names, composers such as Stefania de Kenessey and Kian Ravaei demonstrate the breadth of contemporary composition, with each work offering a distinctive perspective.
The collection also highlights a composer at the very beginning of her career. At the suggestion of David Conte, distinguished head of composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, rising graduate Zoe Yost is represented by her first commercial recording. As a proud Alliance partner of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and its affiliated organisations, including Askonas Holt and Opus 3 Artists, PENTATONE is committed to creating opportunities for emerging talent and providing a platform for new voices.
Together, these recordings offer a celebration of the present and a glimpse of where music is heading next.
'As both composer and director of one of the world's leading independent labels, it is critical to me that we celebrate not just our past achievements but to give opportunity to the voices of today as well as tomorrow. PENTATONE has redoubled our efforts in ensuring that classical music is very much a living, evolving, and multifaceted organism whose brightest days are surely in the future.
'We hope that you, the listener, enjoy this humble survey of contemporary music in our 25th anniversary year. As always, thank you for listening.'
Sean Hickey, Managing Director, PENTATONE
Track List & Statements from the Composers
Donnacha Dennehy - Woven
1. I. Knit
2. II. Thread
3. III. Loom
'My mother was always an avid stitcher, sewer and knitter when we were growing up. She still knits to this day, and I actually think it's a kind of meditation for her, to lose herself in the rhythm of it.
As I was writing this duet for cellist and marimbist, I kept coming back to the interesting binary qualities of textile making, from the stitches in knitting to the structure of a loom that sustains tension across its two main beams. These tactile binary systems inspired the interactions between the two players in this piece as they intersect to create something needing them both. The two faster, intricately interlocking, outer movements reflect on each other and encase a more intimate and unfolding central movement.
Woven was written especially for the percussionist Ji Hye Jung and cellist Guy Johnston for the Westport Festival of Chamber Music in Ireland.'
Stefania de Kenessey
4. Fooled You ('Like a Rock' -- 'Dream away' -- 'Fooled You' -- 'Hurry Up')
'Fooled You features four miniatures for violin and piano, paired with original poetry, performed by six-time Grammy nominee violinist Curtis Stewart and award-winning pianist Donna Weng Friedman, with recitation by Tony-award winning actress Krystal Joy Brown.
The work traces its origins back to Microvids, a book of 19 miniatures for solo piano which I wrote during the pandemic-era lockdown as a source of hope and inspiration in challenging times. The initial title was a nod to Bartók's Mikrokosmos, remembered fondly from my childhood, but transposed to our own age and culture, with short pieces that were rhythmically compelling, musically tuneful, and – more importantly – emotionally uplifting.'
Sam Perkin
5. Le Monde des Adultes
Featuring Ot Ortega Travé (piano) and commissioned by The 2025 Clara Haskil International Piano Competition, Switzerland
'In this dreamlike journey, a child is lost at sea in a vast and enchanted ocean. On the horizon, we gradually hear the tolling bells of the adult world, the resounding bells of time, and the chiming bells of suffering. Despite all these elemental forces, the innocence of the world of the child, being innately more powerful and assured, will emerge once again in our hearts and win the day, forever and ever.'
Anna Clyne
6. Zero at the Bone
Commissioned by Bang on a Can with generous support from Alvin Lucier.
'I wrote Zero at the Bone for Ken Thomson who premiered the work at the Bang on a Can LIVE Online Marathon on June 6, 2021. It sets a poem by Emily Dickinson - A narrow Fellow in the Grass - the last line of which forms the title of this piece. In this poem, Dickinson uses a sudden encounter with a snake to explore the sudden terror of the unknown - an experience that resonates with the COVID-19 pandemic period.'
Zoe Yost - Three Hymns for Wind Quintet
7. I. Hymn to Serenity
8. II. Hymn to Playfulness
9. III. Hymn to Awe
'In my first work for woodwind quintet, I have chosen to musically personify three experiences which grace our lives with wisdom, depth, and color. The Hymn to Serenity advances slowly through sustained tones which, despite their tranquil affect, demand intense focus and accuracy from the performers. The Hymn to Playfulness explores how humor stirs in us liveliness and sanguinity, helping shoulder the sadness and disappointment we are liable to encounter even on our happiest days.
The Hymn to Awe begins with the wonder and uncertainty we feel when discovering something tremendous, then progresses into anxiety and even panic as its true scale overwhelms us. The movement concludes in gratitude for the immensity of life, and for our own small—but precious—place within it.'
Featuring Jihyun Choi (flute and piccolo), Katie Rusalov (oboe), Meli Everson (clarinet), Jaxson Padgett (horn) and Ben Wehtje (bassoon)
Yang Bao
10. SOL ONE
'SOL ONE imagines the anticipation of humanity's first dawn on Mars. The night passes slowly across an unknown world, suspended in silence, until the first ray of sunlight reaches the Martian soil. Performed with piano, Korg PS 3300, and Minimoog, the piece moves between solitude, wonder, and the feeling of a new beginning.'
11. Melodies for Miles
'Melodies for Miles is dedicated to my old college roommate, the violinist, violist, and author Miles Hoffman (1952-2023), who introduced me to Jascha Heifetz, Zino Francescatti, and the tradition of Western classical violin more generally. One day in 1970, he mentioned that he was performing an unusual work with the Yale Symphony that I might like hearing. The piece, Mestizo II, was an ebullient infusion of Albert Ayler-like free improvisation into the classical instrumentarium — a creolizing deformation of mastery. I was first completely captivated, and then astonished to see a young African-American take the stage to accept audience plaudits. I don't think I had seen or even heard of a black composer before, and I decided that I just had to meet him. That was Alvin Singleton, now one of America's most distinguished composers; we've been friends ever since.
Much later, violinist Johnny Gandelsman got to know Mike. We knew that Mike was ill, and Johnny had the idea of commissioning a solo work in his honor. But in the end, Johnny wasn't able to give the premiere, so Modney did it, and Mike got to see the video. He said, 'Wow, that Modney can really play!' And it turned out that Modney had heard Mike play when he was just starting out as a violinist. So now we have a piece that helps keep the memory of Mike's music-making alive. Each and every time the work is performed, it reconnects all of us in the real time of listening.'
Sarah Kirkland Snider
12. Stanzas in Meditation
Featuring Micaela Haslam (soprano), Amanda Morrison (soprano) and Louise Martin (harp)
'This setting of excerpts from Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation is a personal meditation on select stanzas and lines from the poem. People interpret Stein in all different ways, and this 150-page poem, with its repetition of colorless connecting words ('where,' which,' 'these,' have,' 'about,' etc.) and its hazy, abstract sensation of a plot, is a particularly tempting canvas for the reader's projections. The word that occurs most often in Stein's poem is 'they,' for as Ashbery writes, this is a poem about 'them,' the external world: how the narrator assesses them and asserts her own sense of shifting importance around them.
In selecting the excerpts, I sought to highlight these recurring themes of identity and alienation. I set it for two voices because the nature of the text suggested to me an inner dialogue. I preserved portions of certain stanzas while juxtaposing different lines from others, mindful of Stein's general chronology. I sought to spotlight what for me were particularly communicative moments – those where the frustration of striving to accompany the evolving thought of the character felt rewarded by a fleeting, if ultimately illusory, glimpse of understanding.'
Kian Ravaei
13. Ecstasies
'Ecstasies represents my most ambitious attempt to synthesize the Dionysian soundscapes of electronic dance music with the technical innovations of contemporary Western art music and the distinctive expressive qualities of Iranian classical music.
The meaning of the title is threefold: the feeling of ecstasy evoked by EDM, the transcendent and ecstatic character of Dastgah (the mode of Iranian classical music used throughout the piece), and the rave drug Ecstasy. The structure is a microcosm of a DJ set at a rave: a series of buildups and climaxes, exploring various grooves and genres while continuously growing in intensity. The flutist has the Herculean task of matching the dynamism of the electronics while shapeshifting between vastly different manners of playing.
To realize this piece, I needed to fully awaken my knowledge of EDM production, which had lain dormant for nearly ten years. I did it gladly at the behest of flutist Ben Smolen, whose dazzling musicianship and adventurous spirit made this work possible.'
