SKU: BT.YE0001

It was a chance visit to a second hand bookshop in Nottingham that set me on the trail of Rossini's now well-known Duetto for cello and double bass. But the story begins earlier than that. In the 1960s I was studying the double bass at the Royal College of Music with Adrian Beers, who was at that time principal of the English Chamber Orchestra, on the front desk of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and a member of the Melos Ensemble of London (then one of the leading ensembles of the world). I was working on the 'Dragonetti Concerto', as most young players do, and I wanted to find out a bit about it. My teacher said he thought the autograph manuscript might be in the British Library,which was all the encouragement I needed to secure a pass to the Reading Room so I could go and see for myself.

There, sure enough, I found a large collection of Dragonetti's autograph manuscripts, together with other bound volumes relating to his life. The papers had been lovingly collated and annotated by Vincent Novello, one of Dragonetti's closest friends, then deposited in the library before his departure to Italy in 1848, two years after Dragonetti's death. One of the volumes included a lot of letters about various engagements and music festivals, copies of orders for strings Dragonetti wanted from Italy, details about paintings he wanted to buy, and numerous invitations to private functions. The manuscript of the 'Dragonetti Concerto', of course, wasn't among the papers â?? we now know it to have been written by Edouard Nanny a century or so later.

One name that came up regularly in the documents was that of Sir George Smart. Smart had been a violinist in Salomon's orchestra and had played for Haydn at his London concerts in the 1790s. As a child he had learnt much about music from his father, who had in turn been present at many of Handel's rehearsals when he was preparing some of his major works for the first time. Smart was also a fine keyboard player, becoming organist of the Chapel Royal in 1822. As a conductor.

SKU: BO.B.3542

Staeliana was commissioned by the Fundacio Caixa de Catalunya in 2007 for the inauguration of an exposition of the work of Nicolas Staël at La Pedrera, Barcelona. In this work I wanted to compose homage to a painter who knew how to join together in his unique works both the traditions of the past along with the vanguard of his time. Beginning with figurative works which lead toward abstraction, his body of work can be defined as a contrast between these two concepts which, with extreme simplicity, define his entire artistic conception. Staeliana, an expressive chorale, at times both luminous and dramatic, dissolves into the most minimal expression. From the first joining together of the voices it concludes with utter simplicity of expression. The suicide of the artist in 1955 is representative of the dissolution of his existence as well as of his artistic works. This contrast between figurative and abstraction is reflected in the music by the contrast between stability and tension. I believe that this duality may be found both in his work and in his life, always oscillating between living a creative life or opting for death, which may be seen as a fusion in nothingness with the plenitude of purest simplicity.

SKU: FG.55011-875-1

Lotta Wennäkoski's Pige (2021-2022) for string quartet was commissioned to be paired with the Death and the Maiden quartet by Franz Schubert (pige is Danish for girl). The composer tells:

The first movement Vorüber, ach, vorüber! is based on the first half of Schubert’s lied lying behind his The Death and the Maiden quartet. The maiden’s song in the beginning of the lied has not found its way to his string quartet, so I wanted to use this material in mine. The second move-ment Daktylus borrows its idea from the haunting pulse of Schubert’s chant of Death. Something fierce and something soundless can be heard here - along with other variants on the dactyl rhythm. For example, I’ve written a lyrically flowing melody based on the same rhythmic pattern (long-short-short).

Schubert’s quartet is wonderful music and of course a cornerstone of the repertoire, and the death and the maiden is a strong, tempting and gloomy motif in art history. On the other hand, I just couldn’t help seeing the motif also as a - somewhat passé - image of an old male desiring the ulti-mately young female body. The third movement thus turns its gaze to the girl herself. Pigen og scrapbogen, The Girl and the Scrapbook, is joyful textural music - compiled of fragments and freely handled quotations that might spring to mind when thinking of a vital girl’s life.


This product includes the full score and the set of parts.

Movements:
1. Vorüber, ach, vorüber!
2. Daktylus
3. Pigen og scrapbogen (das Mädchen und das Scrapbuch)

The first movement can also be performed separately as a prologue to The Death and the Maiden string quartet by Franz Schubert.

SKU: BR.PB-5622-07

With his first String Quartet in D minor, op. 77, composed in 1855, the native Swiss composer Joachim Raff (1822-1882) bid a brilliant farewell to Weimar.

ISBN 9790004215197. 6.5 x 9 inches.

With his first String Quartet in D minor, op. 77, composed in 1855, the native Swiss composer Joachim Raff bid a brilliant farewell to Weimar. He had been there as Franz Liszt's assistant since 1850 and had made a name for himself in the city's art scene - now he embarked on new paths. He composed his second Quartet in A major, op. 90, already in 1857 in Wiesbaden, the spa town that was to become his home for 21 years. The two quartets are unequivocal works: orchestrally-conceived, full of energetic vigor, and at times uncompromisingly modern. They confidently continue the Beethoven tradition and attest at the same time to Raff's intensive confrontation with Richard Wagner's music during the Weimar years. In his chamber music, the composer wanted to achieve progress in an inherently historical way and to ground the individual substance in existing forms, as he told the Viennese violinist Josef Hellmesberger, who launched opus 77. The quartets, first published in 1860/62, found illustrious interpreters, among them, the Muller brothers' renowned ensemble, to which opus 90 was also dedicated, and Joseph Joachim.In collaboration with the Joachim-Raff-Archiv Lachen (CH)

Some eighteen years elapsed between Raff's first counted String Quartet op. 77 and his Quartets Nos. 6-8 op. 192, combined as one work. As such, Raff parted with the weighty single opus in quartet composition - without, however, sacrificing musical quality.

SKU: BR.PB-5622

ISBN 9790004215197. 6.5 x 9 inches.

With his first String Quartet in D minor, op. 77, composed in 1855, the native Swiss composer Joachim Raff bid a brilliant farewell to Weimar. He had been there as Franz Liszt's assistant since 1850 and had made a name for himself in the city's art scene - now he embarked on new paths. He composed his second Quartet in A major, op. 90, already in 1857 in Wiesbaden, the spa town that was to become his home for 21 years. The two quartets are unequivocal works: orchestrally-conceived, full of energetic vigor, and at times uncompromisingly modern. They confidently continue the Beethoven tradition and attest at the same time to Raff's intensive confrontation with Richard Wagner's music during the Weimar years. In his chamber music, the composer wanted to achieve progress in an inherently historical way and to ground the individual substance in existing forms, as he told the Viennese violinist Josef Hellmesberger, who launched opus 77. The quartets, first published in 1860/62, found illustrious interpreters, among them, the Muller brothers' renowned ensemble, to which opus 90 was also dedicated, and Joseph Joachim.In collaboration with the Joachim-Raff-Archiv Lachen (CH)

Some eighteen years elapsed between Raff's first counted String Quartet op. 77 and his Quartets Nos. 6-8 op. 192, combined as one work. As such, Raff parted with the weighty single opus in quartet composition - without, however, sacrificing musical quality.

SKU: HL.49019756

ISBN 9783795794712. 11.0x15.0x0.982 inches.

The work of Paul Hindemith is encyclopedic in nature. From the outset, he worked in all musical genres and devised several of his musical ideas and projects not as individual, self-contained works but as work cycles with different functional relationships. These contrasting pieces complement each other if experienced as part of the overall structure. Hindemith himself not only wanted a complete edition of his collected works but had begun planning it; at his death he left a detailed list of ‚Unpublished pieces for an eventual complete edition‘.The Complete Works contain all finished works in all extant versions, newly engraved for the edition. Sketches and fragments are published in appendices of the relevant volume, and are evaluated in the Introduction and Critical Commentary by the respective volume editor.Each volume contains a preface by the editorial directors and an introduction by the volume editor, delineating the genesis and performance history of the work, with authentic performance instructions, an evaluation of extant recordings by Paul Hindemith himself and a Critical Commentary.The Complete Works of Paul Hindemith are thus presented in a critical, scholarly edition which is equally appropriate for study and performance. Hindemith researchers will welcome the numerous first publications of works by the composer, and practical musicians will appreciate the newly prepared, philologically ordered performance material.

SKU: PR.144402180

UPC: 680160027156. 9.5 x 13 inches.

The concerts and exhibits of the Cleveland Museum of Art were an important formative influence for me during my student days. So when the invitation came to create a new work celebrating this institution on its seventy-fifth anniversary, I was not only happy to accept, but knew immediately that I wanted to write a piece that would somehow relate specifically to the museum. I decided to make the work a reflection on a painting in the museum's collection: Zurbaran's The Holy House of Nazareth. My quartet is not program music in a narrative sense, but rather a kind of meditation that takes its tone from this painting's remarkable integration of intense affect, mysterious repose and secret geometry. Besides Zurbaran's painting, the piece is occupied with a purely musical object of contemplation: the hymn tune Picardy, best known with the text Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. This tune permeates the harmonic and melodic life of the quartet, sometimes appearing in a very simple, straightforward fashion, but often hidden amidst more complex structures. I was attracted to the melody for its musical qualities, but later realized that the hymn's text also resonates with the mood of the painting; the words speak of a reverent awe, of cherubim with sleepless eye, and of the mystery of the Incarnate Word who must suffer: King of kings, yet born of Mary...

SKU: HL.248688

UPC: 888680729080. 9x12 inches. English.

“Gordon Wright was the friend of a lifetime. For thirty years Gordon and I shared our two greatest passions: music and Alaska. Gordon was my musical collaborator, my next-door neighbor, my fellow environmentalist and my camping buddy. These miniatures are musical sketches of three moments and places in our friendship. Like Alaska, Gordon was larger than life. He always lived his own way. And he died just as he would have wanted. We found him lying on the deck of his cabin in the Chugach Mountains, curled up against his favorite birch tree, looking across the waters of Turnagain Arm toward the Resurrection Valley and the tiny settlement of Hope.” - John Luther Adams

This music contains no normal stopped tones. All the sounds are produced as natural harmonics or on open strings. There are no harmonics higher than the sixth. So these sounds should be clear and resonant. Even so, balancing the harmonics with the open strings requires careful attention.

The durations of the individual pieces are given at the end of each.

The total duration of the set is about ten minutes.