SKU: PR.16400222S
UPC: 680160037841.
This work follows my Quartet No. 1 by five years. In terms of style and aesthetic aim, however, it seems light years away. Where the first work, a 28-minute, four-movement piece, took aim at cosmic conflicts and heroic resolutions, the present work is intended as a kind of divertissment. Harbor Music lasts a mere eleven minutes, is cast in a single movement with six sections, and should leave both performers and listeners with a feeling of good humor and affection. The title comes from my experience as a guest in the magnificent city of Sydney, Australia. One of its most attractive features is its unique system of ferry boats: the city is laid out around a large, multi-channeled harbor, with destinations more easily approached by water than by land. Consequently, inhabitants of Sydney get around on small, people-friendly boats that come and go from the central docks at Circular Quay. During a week's visit in 1991, I must have boarded these boats at least a dozen times, always bound for a new location - the resort town of Manley, or the Zoo at Taronga Park, or the shopping district at Darling Harbour. In casting about for a form for my second string quartet, a kind of loose rondo came to mind. Each new destination would be approached from the same starting-out point (although there are subtle variations in the repeating theme; it's always in a new key, and the texture is never the same). The result, I hope, is a sense of constant new information presented with introductory frames of a more familiar nature. The embarkation theme, which begins the piece, is a sort of bi-tonal fanfare in which the violins are in G major and the viola and cello are in B-flat major. It is bold, eager, and forward-looking. The first voyage maintains this bi-tonality, beginning as a 9/8 due for second violin and viola in a kind of rocking motion -much as a boat produces when reaching the deeper water in the harbor. A sweet, nostalgic theme emerges over this rocking accompaniment. This music is developed somewhat, then transforms quickly into a much faster and lighter episode, filled with rising and falling scales (again, in differing keys). A scherzando interlude in short notes and changing meters provides contrast, and the episode ends with a reprise of the scales. The second embarkation follows, this time in A major/C major. It leads quickly into a very warm and slow theme, in wide-leaping intervals for the viola. This section is interrupted twice by solo cadenzas for the cello, suggesting distant boat-horns in major thirds. The end of the episode becomes a transition, with boat-horns leading into the final appearance of the embarkation music, this time in trills and tremolos instead of sharply accented chords. The nostalgic theme of the first episode makes a final appearance, serving now as a coda. The rocking motion continues, in a lullaby fashion, leaving us drowsy and satisfied on our homeward journey. Harbor Music was written for the Cavani Quartet, and is dedicated to Richard J. Bogomolny. Commissioned by his employees at First National Supermarkets as a gift, it represents a thank you from many of the people (including this composer) who have benefitted from his vision and generosity. An ardent advocate of chamber music (and a cellist himself), Mr. Bogomolny has for many years been Chairman of the Board of Chamber Music America. -- Dan Welcher.
SKU: HL.14031851
ISBN 9788759880661. Danish.
Holmboe's last quartet work, which is unofficially also String Quartet No. 21, was the last work he ever composed, and was unfinished on his death in 1996. His pupil Per Nørgård has finished the quartet, and himself characterizes his contribution by saying that the score existed “in an only partly completed form, which could however be written out with only a few cases of doubt”. With only two movements and a playing time of about nine minutes it is at its existing length the shortest of Holmboe's string quartets. The first movement takes the form of one long arch in a rocking triple time which constantly shiftsamong different tempo and pulse sensations. At the same time the rhythmic energy increases until the movement, in a faster Con moto tempo accelerates to a more flowing 12/8 time, coloured both rhythmically by cross-rhythms in duple time and timbrally by harmonics in the viola. In its middle section, Con fuoco, the movement culminates in both tempo and expression until it falls calm in brief recapitulations in reverse order of the first two sections. The rocking feeling continues in the second movement, but now at a more extroverted level from the outset, Allegro and pizzicato. The energy builds up further as the mood intensifies to Con fuoco, while all instruments go over to bowed playing, but like the first movement, this movement ends Adagio here however not as a gradual attenuation but through a sudden shift in tempo to a calm, imitative passage before the movement slowly thins out to the almost inaudible through a last, dense, open sounding chord with a brief violin solo above it.
The quartet is dedicated to Holmboe's wife MeLa May Holmboe, and was given its first performance by the Kontra Quartet on 22nd March 1997 at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense, Denmark.
SKU: AP.36-52703617
UPC: 735816385521. English.
This humorous little vignette for string quartet was composed in 1979 and was originally intended to be published by Piedmont Music, the ASCAP division of EB Marks Classical. For reasons unknown, however, it remained in manuscript form until 2021, when a copy of the composer's autograph parts was discovered in the archives of a completely different Alan Shulman piece. This newly engraved Latham Music edition therefore represents the first publication of Shulman's delightful work, as well as the first full score. As the title suggests, this is a medium-slow rag, or cakewalk in a loose AABA form. The bluesy and graceful main melody is introduced by the first violin in a call and response exchange with the rest of the ensemble. The restatement of the primary theme is led by the second violin, with the entire ensemble playing pizzicato, having the effect of playful mockery. In the B section, the first violin earnestly reasserts the stately grace from the opening however, the cello is clearly becoming restless and decides to take over the lead just before the final reprise. The lighthearted ending again has the first violin doing its best to bring the tune to a refined conclusion, but the rest of the group still has mischief in mind. After a couple moments of seeming confusion, the ensemble regroups at last and plays the final riff with resolute emphasis. If you're looking to add a light moment to a recital program, or looking for a short, medium level contest piece that players and audiences alike will enjoy, this little miniature is an ideal choice!
These products are currently being prepared by a new publisher. While many items are ready and will ship on time, some others may see delays of several months.
SKU: HL.49016754
ISBN 9790001146500. 9.0x12.0x0.68 inches.
Ignaz Joseph Pleyel (1757-1831), a composition student of Josef Haydn, was not only one of the most successful composers of his time, but also an active concert organizer, pianoforte manufacturer, publisher and music dealer. To mark his 250th birthday on 01.06.2007, this critical edition appears on the basis of the text of the first edition stored in the archives of the Schott publishing house. It contains the three most beautiful of the twelve string quartets dedicated by Pleyel to the King of Prussia.
SKU: HL.14036341
ISBN 9780711955080.
Commissioned by the BBC and premiered by the Chilingirian String Quartet. Quoting Wood: In my Second and Third Quartets I attempted sectional, agglutinative forms: in my Fourth I return to the conventional four movement form of my First Quartet of 1962. Both works build up (as in the 19th century symphony) to the Finale, thus making it the most substantial movement, which provides a climax to the work. The First Movement has, in both works, only the status of an Introduction. But there the consciously willed resemblances end. This Introduction follows the Second Quartet to a certain extent, in that it provides a sort of 'cauldron', from which elements to be used later can all be plucked. Its opening will reappear at various points throughout the work, most completely at a climatic point of the Finale (bar 110). Subsequent material will be more fully worked out in the second movement, a large Scherzo. The Introduction concludes with an unusually placed violin cadenza (itself a rare feature in a string quartet, the idea lifted from Elliott Carter's First Quartet) of which the opening is to reappear halfway through the Finale. The Scherzo (which follows attacca) does not have at its centre a discretely characterized Trio: a figure in double-stops like a distant fanfare supplies the necessary contrast of a second idea. The Slow Movement has a secondary idea first heard on the cello and marked appassionato: an agitato middle section recalls the opening of the work, but in a formulation which will be found closely to anticipate its reappearance in the Finale. The Finale is planned on a broad scale. Only after a fully worked exposition of both primary and secondary material does the opening of the whole work return, now in a greatly extended form. Then, at bar 140, the tune of the violin cadenza is first harmonized in fanfare style on the upper instruments, then presented as a chorale on the lower ones, with a rushing semiquaver accompaniment above. This climatic activity mounts to the very end. The work is dedicated to the Chilingirian Quartet, old friends over many years. Score available separately: SOS04044.
SKU: HL.48024228
ISBN 9781540057310. UPC: 888680949266. 9x12 inches.
For Isang Yun, String Quartet No. 3 from 1959 marked the beginning of his European creative phase and of his official canon of works. Now it is possible to encounter Yun's early works from his Korean period in the form of his String Quartet No. 1 (1955). Three important 10-minute movements containing references not only to Asia but also to Ravel, Bartók and Eastern European folk musicand having an idiosyncratic structure: “Yun lines up forms and figures, makes them emerge from each other in a contrasting manner and assembles them into a mosaic-like whole, seeking for integration, laying down his material in layer upon layer and ending the movements with a rhythmic unison. [] Even then, he probably regarded a work of art as an energetic stream of sounds and as a reflection of a world whose diverging parts weave into a harmonic whole.” (Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer).
SKU: PR.114414250
UPC: 680160607846.
Lowell Liebermann's 4th String Quartet was commissioned by the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival and the Wood Library, Canandaigua, NY, for the Orion Quartet in celebration of their 20th Anniversary. The quartet was premiered by the Orions at the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival in Rochester, NY on February 9th, 2008. To quote the writer Mark Greenberg: It's a remarkable piece. The mood is elegiacal and meditative, the melodic lines sinuous and searching, the harmonies rich and astonishingly beautiful. Liebermann works within the traditions of Western tonality, but that is a mansion with many rooms. Liebermann inhabits all of them as his expressive purposes require, and he doesn't mind knocking down a wall to create new harmonic spaces. The Fourth Quartet doesn't exactly fit the neoromantic niche into which Liebermann is sometimes placed. Much of the music, especially near the beginning, is a highly advanced and fluid chromatic expressionism with modernist tendencies. Sometimes this roiling cloudscape breaks open to allow a patch of near-classical harmony and almost-resolution. Near the midpoint the clouds lift in leaping modulations. Several chordal passages recall Russian Orthodox chant. Suddenly, when you've begun to think the somber, deliberate pace has gone on a bit too long, Liebermann introduces a kind of hobbled, stilted jazz idiom. The piece dies in pensive quiet.
SKU: FG.55011-878-2
Lasting 27 minutes, Kalevi Aho’s String quartet no. 4 (2021) is in four movements. The first, Nocturne, begins with a hazily muted melody dominated by the interval of a minor third on the second violin. Though the first movement begins in nocturnal mood, there is also some more forceful music around the middle. The second movement, Allegro capriccioso, is quick with quirky rhythms. At times tempestuous, it faces the players with the biggest technical and virtuoso challenges. The following Largo is slow. A couple of times in the first half it is dominated by soft, mysterious harmonies. The tempo marking of the virtuosic closing movement is Presto, leggiore. The movement begins with quick, flickering, will-o’-the-wisp-like music. It later builds up to an extremely violent climax dominated by tremolo figures on the second violin and thick chords on the other instruments. The flickering music of the beginning returns at the end, before dissolving into silence.This product includes the full score (A4) and the parts (B4).
SKU: BT.BB3474
ISBN 9783793141716.
For Isang Yun, String Quartet No. 3 from 1959 marked the beginning of his European creative phase and of his official canon of works. Now it is possible to encounter Yun's early works from his Korean period inthe form of his String Quartet No. 1 (1955). Three important 10-minute movements containing references not only to Asia but also to Ravel, Bartók and Eastern European folk music and having an idiosyncraticstructure: Yun lines up forms and figures, makes them emerge from each other in a contrasting manner and assembles them into a mosaic-like whole, seeking for integration, laying down his material in layer upon layer and endingthemovements with a rhythmic unison. […] Even then, he probably regarded a work of art as an energetic stream of sounds and as a reflection of a world whose diverging parts weave into a harmonic whole. (Walter-WolfgangSparrer)
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