SKU: MB.31154

ISBN 9781513473888. 8.75X11.75 inches.

Practicing scales is essential to building and maintaining strength, technique, tone, and agility on the viola, but it is easy to slip into the habit of playing scales automatically, without paying attention to tonality or sound production. The 29 single-page studies in this book focus the attention of violists on the beauty of sound, with a particular concern for the way different keys resonate on the viola.The first 24 studies address all minor and relative major keys and proceed through the circle of fifths; the last 5 pieces are individually conceived, i.e., apart from the circle of fifths. No metronome indications are given, so the etudes can be played at individually comfortable tempos.The names of the etudes refer to various animals that have scales, including insects, fish, birds, reptiles, and a few species of mammals. The author hopes that in addition to experiencing more enjoyable scale practice, students will be inspired to learn more about these amazing creatures and write scale studies of their own.

SKU: BT.DHP-1145555-400

ISBN 9789043135979. English-German-French-Dutch.

Position 1 covers the four fingerings of the first position. The connection between these fingerings and the different keys - up to three sharps or flats - is also dealt with. The book features 38 exercises for the various fingerings, sevenscale and triad exercises, and 68 attractive performance pieces in a range of musical styles. The performance pieces can be played with CD accompaniment (demo and play-along tracks are featured on CDs 1 and 2) or with piano accompaniment. The pianoaccompaniments can be found on CD 2 in PDF form.

In Position 1 worden alle vingerstellingen binnen de 1e positie geleerd aan de hand van grepenschema?s, oefeningen en speelstukken. Verder wordt het verband gelegd tussen de verschillende vingerstellingen in toonladders en drieklanken inde 1e positie over 2 oktaven. De 68 speelstukken kunnen met cd-begeleiding worden gespeeld, of met live-pianobegeleidingen. Deze worden als pdf geleverd op de 2 bijbehorende cd?s. De vertrouwde afwisseling van nieuwe stukken, arrangementen vanklassieke thema?s en volksliedjes ontbreekt uiteraard niet!

Lees hier de boekbespreking uit Arco.

In Position 1 geht es um die vier Griffarten der ersten Lage. Diese Griffarten werden auch mit den verschiedenen Tonarten - mit bis zu drei Kreuzen oder Bs - verknüpft. Das Buch umfasst 38 �bungen für die verschiedenen Griffarten, siebenTonleiter- und Dreiklangsübungen sowie 68 reizvolle Vortragsstücke in einer ganzen Palette an Musikstilen. Die Vortragsstücke können zu den Begleitungen auf den beiden CDs (die Demo- und Mitspielversionen enthalten), aber auch mit einem Pianistengespielt werden. Die Klavierstimmen sind im PDF-Format zum Ausdrucken auf der CD 2 enthalten.

Position 1 couvre les quatre doigtés de la première position et examine le rapport entre ces doigtés et les différentes tonalités - jusquà trois dièses ou bémols. Cet ouvrage contient 38 exercices pour les divers doigtés, 7exercices de gammes et de triades, et 68 morceaux de concert dans une diversité de styles. Ces morceaux peuvent être exécutés avec l´accompagnement du CD, mais aussi accompagnés au piano. Des versions intégrales et de démonstration figurent surles CD 1 et 2, ce dernier comprenant aussi les partitions du piano sous forme de fichiers PDF.

Position 1 affronta le quattro diteggiature della prima posizione. La pubblicazione contiene 38 esercizi per le varie posizioni, sette scale e terze, come anche 68 accattivanti brani in vari stili musicali da suonare in pubblico. Questipossono essere eseguiti sia con lausilio dei 2 CD inclusi (traccia demo e traccia play-along), sia con l´accompagnamento di un pianista. Le parti del piano, contenute sul secondo CD, sono scaricabili in formato PDF.

SKU: PR.16400272S

UPC: 680160588442. 8.5 x 11 inches.

My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change.   I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]   The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla.   Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional.   II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts]   This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture.   This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream.   III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts]   The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this.   Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1.   String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.

SKU: BO.B.2678

English comments:
Death and the Maiden.This is a Catalan folk song that captivated me the very first time I heard it. In 1974 I decided to indulge myself by using this song for a composition for violin and string orchestra (and solo violin with a quartet). The popular theme takes the form of a long violin solo based on triplets with a background of soft harmonies played by the rest of the musicians. --Jordi Cervello

Comentarios del Espanol:
La muerte y la doncella. Se trata de una melodia popular catalana que desde su primer momento me cautivo. Fue en 1974 cuando me decidi a recrearme con ella a traves de una composicion para violin y orquesta de cuerda (tambien violin solista con cuarteto). El tema popular encuadra un largo solo del solista a base de tresillos inspirados en el Coral-Preludio de una cantata de J. S. Bach. --Jordi Cervello.

SKU: PR.144404550

UPC: 680160030859.

After finishing a serious woodwind quintet in the fall of 2001 [Tela Lacerata], I found, in the ensuing months, that its cinders/ashes were still impregnating my eardrums. Therefore, when I set out to write the present string piece, I realized that the musical veins of the quartet, like related cousins, were sharing the same blood as the earlier wind composition. The resultant Fifth Quartet evolved into two large, extended movements, each one containing seven parts that are played without pause. As the list of the various sub-sections clearly indicates, the formal structure of the movements appear to be identical: each with three main parts enveloped by interludes, plus an introduction and coda. However, the principal segments of the first (slow) movement gradually decrease in length, while those of the second (fast) movement increase. In addition, there is a goodly amount of sonic material stolen from the first movement which reappears -- stitched together in a new guise -- into the world of the second. for example, the bulk of Parts B and C of Movement II are lifted bodily, although elaborately modified, from their first appearances in the Introduction and Part A of the fist movement. This offers, I suppose at least a hint of a traditional recapitulation. As was true in the earlier woodwind piece -- both harmonically and melodically -- the embryonic growth of the musical fabric (primarily the tritone and perfect fifth) is omnipresent, almost obsessively, throughout the course of the whole work. These two intervals, not unlike plasticine, habitually transform themselves into the scales, chords, and melodic lines that pervade the texture of the quartet. Owing to the largely unrelieved dramatic flow, the shifting speed, and the often fervent intensity, the quartet places considerable demands on the dexterity, virtuosity, and stamina of the four performers. String Quartet No. 5 is approximately 22 minutes in duration and affectionately dedicated to my violinist wife Elizabeth, as a gift for our 47 years together. It was commissioned by the Corigliano String Quartet, New York, NY. -- Sydney Hodkinson.

SKU: FH.VA6

ISBN 978-1-55440-568-8.

This groundbreaking series for viola offers a sound and progressive collection of Repertoire, Recordings, Etudes, Technique, and Orchestral Excerpts for the aspiring virtuoso. Representing all major style periods and a variety of genres, Viola Series, 2013 Edition offers all the music and tools needed to support a comprehensive course of study from the beginner to advanced levels. A rich and varied selection of music in each of these nine progressive volumes of repertoire appeals to violists of all ages. From the Preparatory Level through Level 8, students will be exposed to quality selections originally written for viola, fun arrangements of traditional fiddle and folk tunes, as well as contemporary pieces by notable composers such as Violet Archer, Carey Cheney, and Fritz Kriesler.
Concertos:
Concerto in B flat Major - Hoffmeister, Franz Anton arr. Alison A. Copland
- First Movement
Premier Solo, op. 77, no. 1 - Dancla, Charles
Concerto in C Major - Schmitt, Joseph arr. Bernhard Pauler
- First Movement
Sonatas:
Sonata in E Minor, HWV 375 - Handel, George Frideric arr. Harold Birston
- Second Movement
- Third Movement
Solo per alto viola (The Billiard Sonata) - Giardini, Felice arr. Christine Donkin
- Second Movement
- Third Movement
Sonata in B flat Major - Stamitz, Carl
- First Movement
Concert Repertoire:
Couplets de folies - Marais, Marin arr. Paul Doktor
Hebrew Melody No. 1 - Joachim, Joseph
Air with Variations (The Harmonious Blacksmith) - Handel, George Frideric arr. Watson Forbes
Orientale - Granados, Enrique arr. Christine Donkin
elegie, op. 44 - Glazunov, Aleksandr
Unaccompanied Repertoire:
Fantasia No. 1 in E flat Major, TWV 40:14 - Telemann, Georg Philipp
- First Movement
- Second Movement
Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 - Bach, Johann Sebastian
- First Movement: Prelude
- Second Movement: Gigue.

SKU: FG.55011-775-4

ISBN 9790550117754.

Alex Freeman found initial inspiration for his string quartet (2015) in a series of photographs a geologist friend showed him of en échelon veins in rock formations. The open strings punctuated with pizzicato unisons that begin the single-movement work call to mind something crystalline and shimmering, which is immediately infused with tumbling lyrical lines in something of a rapid caccia technique throughout. The middle of the work becomes more suspended in slower material loosely based on a technique of prolation canon, comprises layers of free, expressive, lyrical, and even elegiac music moving at different speeds. As the work concludes, the materials converge in a rhythmically pulsating stasis and an almost chorale-like statement.

Duration: c. 13'

This product includes the score and the parts (A4 sized).


American-Finnish composer Alex Freeman (b.1972) has established himself among the foremost composers of choral music in Finland. A dedicated citizen of his musical community, a teacher, and a choral singer himself, he composes music that reflects an appreciation for a wide range of aesthetics and a passion for communicating with listeners and performers. In his choral works, in particular, we find music that aims to be sonorous, melodic, and resonant, but is always crafted to carefully avoid the cliches that can burden conventional tonality.

His instrumental works run the gamut: a cantata with orchestra based on poetry of Whitman; a significant body of solo piano works that reveal deep roots in everything from austere absolute music to soaring elegaic rhetoric (see Albany Records, Inner Voice); his chamber work Blueshift (Navona Records), which is a kind of paean to Reich and Adams in miniature; open-ended modular works, like various iterations of his Slow All Clocks for electronic media, solo clarinet, and mixed choirs of kanteles; and, recently, some new directions in microtonal music.

SKU: HL.49046188

ISBN 9781540051684. UPC: 888680938703. 9.0x12.0 inches.

When Cuarteto Casals approached me with the idea of illuminating Beethovens quartets anew, you can imagine the many thoughts and feelings that where going through my mind: what a joy, what a great honor What an intriguing head-scratcher! How can you possibly shine a new light on something that is already perfect? Weeks, months went by in search of a common ground between the Master and myself until I finally found it in the realization that a word lays hidden in the St. Johns hymn that gave musical notes their original name: Re, Sol, Ut, Io (D, G, C, B in English music notation) Perfect! “Resolutio” in Latin means both the resolution of aproblem and the re-solution: a re-blend of many elements that will eventually coagulate to make something new. There was finally themelodic and a rhythmical canvas for my piece. On this canvas I wrote the story of a funny little contest, played on a sunny Mediterranean square, between street musicians and Cuarteto Casals just minutes before they are about to go on stage to perform Beethovens Harp Quartet. After all the characters, each in his own way, had the chance to tell their story, a gentle rain starts to fall, dissolving (Re-solving) again the music sheet to eventually leave us with just a white piece of paper for somebody else to continue the Work. (Lucio Franco Amanti).

SKU: FG.55011-906-2

ISBN 9790550119062.

Harri Wessman's Summer Variations for viola and piano (1998) exploites the rich and romantic sound of the viola and enjoys the many shades of summer days. It is dedicated to violist Yuri Gandelsman, who premiered the suite with Risto Lauriala 15th June 1998.

Duration: c. 11'

Movements:
1. Summer theme
2. What is this?
3. Pizzicato
4. Con sordino
5. Stile concitato ostinato
6. Tango
7. Finale

Harri Wessman (b. 1949) is interested in all aspects of music that may be expressive, without in any way ignoring the possibilities of melody. He himself describes his harmonic method as a kind of contrapuntally treated jazz harmony. Wessman is particularly preoccupied with the ability of music to express emotions, an interest which has led him to study the so-called doctrine of the affections and the musical rhetoric of the baroque era. His Eine kleine Figurenlehre for wind quartet and piano is a playful application of a set of baroque musical figures.

His output is dominated by chamber and vocal music as well as a number of concertos for various instruments such as the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra and the Serenade for Piano and String Orchestra. During recent years pedagogic music has become a more and more central area in his output with an emphasis on creating repertoire for budding musicians, from beginners to young professionals. He has even tailored some solo and chamber works for young musicians that he personally knows: e.g. Five Trombone Pieces for Minna Kajander (1992), Five Horn Pieces for Jenni Kuronen (1993), Five Piano Etudes for Tiina Karakorpi, Five Trumpet Pieces for Alevtina Parland and Five Double Bass Pieces for Amanda Thieme. Other chamber and solo pieces include Pan and the Nymph Pitys (1979) for flute and guitar, Three Caprices for Konstantin Weitz (1994) for solo violin and Capriccio for wind ensemble (1989).