SKU: HL.14035889

ISBN 9788759859285. English-Danish.

I - Lento
II - Imposante
III - Andante

Programme Note

In my early television remembrance I recall a broadcast with Samuel Beckett, one of the fathers of the absurd play and drama. At one time Beckett looked the viewer (the camera) in the eye and said:'What! - is the Word'. I have not since been able to forget it, obviously, having borrowed this ambiguous sentence as title for this short cello sonata.

The fact that it is conceived as a unity is obvious from the fact that the two outer movements are closely related. The long, immediately recognizable melodic line which dominates the first movement appears in the third movement aswell, first in an inverted version and then almost identical to its original appearance, only shorter.
In contrast, the middle movement is a fast one, constantly and intensely on the move, with many changes of pulse and meters, as well as large melodic leaps. And while the outer movements each are composed as a single melodic line, the middle movement makes extensive use of the cello as a polyphonic instrument employing lots of chords, double stops and flageolet effects.

Per Norgard (2010).

SKU: HL.14028929

Written for Moray Welsh whilst still an undergraduate at York University. This piece was completed in mid-September. Inspired by Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf. A solo 'cello seemed an appropriate medium for music which might explore the character of Harry Haller, with his desire for bourgeois comfort and his strong misanthropic and suicidal tendencies. The opening theme attempts to express this - melancholy, nostalgic, a bit Biedermeyer (cf. Brahms Intermezzi). The basic theme of the book, at its simplest, is that every human personality consists of hundred of different personalities - within every man there lurks a wolf. Accordingly the tendency of my piece is for all its musical material to become distorted, either by thematic transformation or by changes of timbre. There are three movements played without a break. The first is a character portrait of the Steppenwolf. The second is concerned in the most general sort of way with the dance elements in the novel - Harry's being taught to dance and appreciate low 'popular' music - a tango is recapitulated in a waltz and 'Yearning', a popular song of the time (1927) is hinted at. The third movement concerns the Masked Ball and the Magic Theatre. Mozart is one of Hesse's great loves and he is repeatedly mentioned in the book. Inevitably some Mozart quotes have been worked in, the most significant being a reference to The Magic Flute 'fire and water' flute theme in the middle of the second movement. Long before I finished the piece, I was disenchanted with the work of Hesse. Much of Steppenwolf I now find rather embarrassing and the claims currently made for Hesse's greatness seem to me exaggerated. Since my piece is in no important sense programmatically specific, this change of heart doesn't really matter. ~ David Blake.

SKU: HL.14032529

The Double Concerto was commissioned by the BBC for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra to perform at the International Cello Festival in Manchester on 30 April 1992, with soloists Ralph Kirshbaum and Gregor Horsch, and conductor Raymond Leppard.

SKU: HL.14028496

From the work for Cello and 8 Choirs.

SKU: HL.14030388

SKU: HL.14011813

SKU: HL.14002774

SKU: HL.14033083

SKU: HL.14028934

ISBN 9788759881880. English.

SKU: HL.14026464

8.5x11.0x0.047 inches.

From the Works of Henry Purcell, Sonatas IV-VI.

SKU: HL.14018068

English.