Par VAUGHAN WILLIAMS RALPH. On his return to civilian life after five years Army service in the First World War, Vaughan Williams revised some pre-war works, such as The Lark Ascending and his opera Hugh the Drover , and embarked on new compositions - the Pastoral Symphony , the one-act Bunyan episode The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains and the Mass in G minor - all of which have outwardly in common a serene tranquillity. But beneath the surface, especially of the symphony, is a requiem-like mood, a legacy of the war. This ambiguity can also be sensed in the three songs -or rondels - for voice and string trio which he called Merciless Beauty. The texts are attributed to Chaucer./ Répertoire / Chant et Piano

Kammeroper Nr. 2. Par RIHM WOLFGANG. Chamber opera does not mean “little opera.” On the same scale as chamber music is to the symphony, it is rather the other way of talking onstage. The movable apparatus permits sophisticated voice-leading. A large ensemble demands simple conception to achieve the complexity it perhaps intends; this can be formulated more sharply and nuanced in a chamber ensemble. Therefore it is the subject which this type of presentation must sustain – or, better, provoke. Büchner’s Lenz is a description of the conditions within a process of collapse, moments of destruction already occurred but not yet accepted, evident in the points of contact with the environment. And it was those points of contact which Michael Fröhling attempted to reconstruct onstage. Lenz’s distraught state is always the same; only the proximity of the environment to that distraught state grows and ebbs. The musical consequence An hour of extreme chamber music results from this description: always bound for the main character – actually, not a commentary, but the main character himself as a multilayered level of action. Although Lenz acts on many levels – or tries to or believes he is – he has no room to manoeuvre. That is why he is also tightly interwoven in his sonic surroundings; the voices which only he hears are just as much himself as the two men with whom he foregathers (the liberal pragmatist Oberlin and the alert merchant who always “does the right thing” in every situation) – they evoke responses which he deeply desires. Omnipresent Friederike is just as much his inner world as Nature is – Nature, which he can no longer perceive unless it is personified, enlivened or dead. Therefore, the music’s task is both to motivate the “situation” (atmospherically) and to be the psychological constant (via a network of entangled references per se) in an action as it is played out. The compositional process December 1977 to June 1978 – a period identical to the stepwise understanding of an existence as that of Jakob Lenz. Yet the more the historical figure became precisely attendant in my intellect in terms of data and atmosphere, the more it retreated in favour of a cipher of disturbance as I began to understand Lenz. Thence the explanation for the failure of the attempts to approach him – including my attempt to interpret him via musical representation – because, essentially, Lenz himself is the failure. Only the naked stages of that failure remain portrayable, i.e. including the failure of those who wish to “help” Lenz, for example, while Lenz himself is already trapped inextricably in a state of complete destruction. I tried to compose my way into that situation as far as possible; the insistence of several rhythmic and harmonic configurations is the palpable expression of the main character’s ever-recurring rigidity. One sound pervades the entire work. The musical stage For me, this is a place where very magical and very human things take place. In Jakob Lenz, the human aspects often switch to magical ones, since the realism of a self-suasive, unhinged soul takes on surreal traits – or we simply cannot understand that otherwise except as not being real. A character like Jakob Lenz on the stage is complex due to the fact alone that it harbours many stages within itself, and music must represent those constantly present stages. I have tried to do so in the most direct way – by not cleanly separating the musical layers, but keeping them constantly in evidence until they must break forth, each in accord with its own dramaturgy. In an overview, the large form takes on aspects of a rondo, performed in overlapping layers – a type of rondo relief, since perspectives of psychological proximity and distance are indeed formulated musically as atmospheric relations. Above all: the thread on which Jakob Lenz hangs is the current onto the listeners’ hearts. Wolfgang Rihm (January 1979)/ Répertoire / Chant et Piano

Written after William Shakespeare  La Mort D'Ophélie is a piece by Hector Berlioz. For two female voices (Soprano and Contralto) accompanied by a Piano this piece tells the story of the death of Ophélie while she was picking some flowers next to a torrential river. Even though the end of the story is sad the music is highly lyrical resulting from the combination of the two voices and the Piano part could be played by an upper intermediate player. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was a French Romantic composer who made a significant contribution to music. His best-known pieces are his''Fantastic Symphony'' and his ''Requiem''.

Two Songs: The Colour And All In Green was expertly composed in 1997 by Sadie Harrison. This piece was first performed for the BMIC Cutting Edge Series in November 2004 at The Warehouse London by Sarah Leonard and Jonathan Powell.Australian born freelance composer and performer Sadie Harrison’s unique fusion of elements from indigenous Lithuanian music and poetry withher own modernist often abrasive style have led her to be compared with Bartok but with her own warmth and grandeur. Since 2012 Harrison has been working along side a long list of well accomplishedmusicians; Paul Carey Peter Sheppard Skaerved Sergej Okrushko Alex South Duncan Honeybourne are among many who have had the privilege work with Harrison so far. Performances ofHarrison's works have been given across the world by Lontano London Chamber Symphony Music Projects/ London Ixion Okeanos Bournemouth Sinfonietta Kokoro and the St. Christopherus Chamber Orchestra and manyothers.

Par FRANCES-HOAD CHERYL. A two and a half minute piece for voices and piano, commissioned and first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra Discovery Choir conducted by Neil Ferris..One Earth sets a text by Di Sherlock for voices and piano and is an ideal community choir piece. / Date parution : 2022-04-26/ Répertoire / Chant et Piano

Par SZYMANOWSKI KAROL. (VII) The Polish idiom appeared in Szymanowskis music in 1920, foreshadowing the beginning of a new period of creativity, later called nationalistic. Before this idiom was realised and such compositions typical of the Polish style as the ballet Harnasie, the Mazurkas, Stabat Mater, Fourth Symphony and Second Violin Concerto had been written, the change in musical thinking and the first experiments in the new language took place in songs. Symptoms of the new style manifested themselves fully in Slopiewnie, Op. 46 bis, composed in the summer of 1921 and published by Universal Edition. In these bizarre songs to bizarre words by Tuwim Szymanowski attempted to crystallize and generalize artistically some primaeval Polish, racial as he described them elements in music. The inspiring factor was undoubtedly the text by Julian Tuwim, abounding in new-coined words and imbued with its own music. It indicated the direction that artistic creativity was to take, and made the full corellation of the verbal and musical layers possible in, as Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski has stated, all the planse of co-operation phonic, structural, expressional and semantic. Based on A. Neuer Commentary to Complete Edition Volume C11 (VIII) Szymanowski did not yield to the temptation of easy over-stilization. Streching out to the deepest ethnic layers of his native musical culture, he made an attempt to mould and suitably fashion a Polish style of musical utterance. This tendency is apparent in the Three Lullabies, Op. 48, to words by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, composed in 1922 and published by Universal Edition in 1926. In the Lullabies we can find the confirmation of the fact that utterly new atmosphere which, according to the composer, Slopiewnie had introduced into his music, was not a once-for-all phenomemon. The elements of the new musical language, analised in connection with the earlier cycle, may here be regarded as assimilated. These are modalities in vocal melodies (Lullaby I) and cadences (Lullabies I and III), a bourdon effect with a tritone (Lullaby II). However these sometimes sligh and apparently unimportant details recur constatnly, an so acquire the nature of a definite compositional technique establishing a style based in an increasing degree on nationalistic elements. Based on Adam Neuer Commentary to Complete Edition Volume C11 (IX) The Childrens Rhymes, Op. 49, a cycle of twenty short songs by Kazimiera Illakowicz, composed in 1922-23, were a completely new creative experience for Szymanowski. He composed the Rhymes with his 11-year-old niece in mind. She was the daughter of Stanislawa Korwin-Szymanowska, who performed these songs for the first time in Warsaw on 25 February 1924. / Date parution : 2021-12-09/ Recueil / Chant et Piano

Inspired by the verse of the German romantic poets Franz Schubert achieved glittering fame as a creator of the 19th-century lied long before public recognition of his symphonies assured his place in music. In 10 years Schubert composed over 600 lieder whose charming melodies harmonic invention and depth of emotion rank them at the top of the form. This volume offers 59 favourite songs from the standard Breitkopf and Hartel complete-score edition of 1884-97. Includes Das Wanderer Die Forelle and Schwanengesang.

Arranged by Herbert Chappell for narrator and piano. Story by Michael Bond. Chappell?s witty and attractive music illustrates Paddington?s travels making this a lovely story for youngsters to listen and respond to. The final pages give everyone the chance to join in with Paddington?s own tune which is familiar as the theme music for the famous TV series featuring his adventures. Duration c. 25 minutes. / Classique / Partition /