SKU: HL.48181054

UPC: 888680787059. 9x12 inches.

Internationally acclaimed French composer Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) followed the music traditions of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy yet implemented his own, distinctive style. His Sarabande et Cortege for Bassoon and Piano displays influences of Debussy's eschewing of tonality and Ravel's inventive textures. These, combined with Dutilleux's unique uses of structure and pedal points create a truly riveting piece for bassoon and piano. Sarabande et Cortege comes at the beginning of Dutilleux's career and was composed as part of a set of four exam pieces for the Paris Conservatoire (1942-1950). Yet the popularity of all four pieces remains, and they continue to be performed to this day. Elements like lyrical melodies and furious semiquaver passages make for an exciting piece for bassoonists.

SKU: PR.510076960

1. Choral: An improbably superimposing of Beethoven and Brahms. At the end of the first performance of the latter's 1st Symphony, someone asked the composer: Don't you find that your main theme remin ds one of the Ode to Joy? To which he retorted: Even an idiot would have noticed it! 2. Fugue: in the last exposition, the subject of Fugue I from volume 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Keyboard is super imposed on the theme from Mozart's so-called easy sonata. 3. Passion: In his Violin Concerto, Mendelssohn, to whom we owe the rediscovery of Bach's Passions, seems to have borrowed a theme from a lost Passion. 4. Recitativo: Tribute to Franck's tribute to Bach in his Sonata for violin and piano. 5. Invention: A private revenge, after a bitter failure. Debussy's Toccata was on the compulsory list for the Conservatory piano class entrance exam. 6. Arpeggione: In which the listener realizes the similarity in the introduction to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and Arpeggione Sonata. 7. Sarabande: The most iconoclastic, for Bach's 5th Cello Suite is already suffused with harmony. There might be an evocatioin of a Brahms-like overarching structure, though... 8. Variation: The slowest variation ever written on Paganini's 24th Caprice. 9. Scene: Schumann's Reverie as a Prelude. 10. Finale: In order to capture the elusive harmony of the Finale of Chopin's Sonate Funebre. 11. Fugue on Au clair de la lune: Our greatest nursery rhymes, fugue fitted and choralized. 12. Fugue de Noel (Christmas fugue): Quite appropriate. 13. Fugue on J'ai du bon tabac: Prohibited counterpoint. 14. Fugue on La Marseillaise: Franco-German reconciliation. 15. Pedal - Exercitium: Realization and conclusion of Bach's organ pedal exercies.