SKU: HL.48023696

UPC: 888680096304. 6.75x10.5 inches.

David Brunner, known for his beautiful melodies and wonderful accompaniments, has set seven “tiny unison pieces” using haiku text. Each of the seven is about “seasons” and form a set. They are glimpses, sparse, yet fully there, like haiku.

SKU: BR.PB-32032-07

ISBN 9790004215661. 6.5 x 9 inches.

Invaluable Glimpses Schumann's close collaboration with the David quartet, together with the valuable advice of his friend Mendelssohn Bartholdy, led the composer to make extensive changes to the Streichquartette op. 41 before publication in December 1842. The present edition is hence to be thought of as a critical Urtext edition; it offers in fact to those interested, an invaluable glimpse into Schumann's creative process and his striving for the final form of his string quartets. All the deletions, changes, and the original phrasing were carefully worked out in detail, restored, and editorially identified in the music text. A detailed preface giving the geneses of the works, as well as pages of the autograph score in facsimile, complement the edition. The parts are of course so configured in the reliable Breitkopf quality that the quartets can also be performed today in the traditional form. The present edition was also used for the Leipzig String Quartet's 2010 CD recording.

SKU: HL.14025352

ISBN 9788759885420. English-Danish.

Preface The three movements of the quartet may be perceived as three different expressions of an unstable core: an inherent unrest leads to frequent changes of direction. The first movement is full of dramatic contrasts: it is followed by a second movement, whose basic mood of meditative rest is challenged by occasional centrifugal utbursts, while the third movement takes the inherent conflicts to a higher level, contrasting material of introspective lyricism with excessively pathetic moods. The final way out is a retrograde one, (back) into the source: through a constant accelerando-diminuendo the piece disappears into a vanishing point. The into the source of the titlemay be visualized as a reversed fountain-action: the broad fan-like spread of the first movement, a more coherent-solid second movement, and finally - in the third movement - a return-run, ever more vehemently, like a suction into the spring itself ... The musical motifs are varied: there are traffic-situations (which I heard!) with stomping and machine-like rhythms in different, but simultaneous tempi, and there are more abstract upwards and downwards half-tone-scales, with changing accents, creating glimpses of melodies. INTO THE SOURCE, String Quartet No. 9, was composed on a double-commission from the Orion Quartet and the Vertavo Quartet. The premiere performances took places in Santa Fe in 2002 and in Oslo in 2003. Per Norgard.

SKU: FT.FM1164

ISBN 9790570790630. 8.25 x 11.75 inches.

SKU: PR.11641861SP

UPC: 680160685202.

What?! - my composer colleagues said - A concerto for the piano? It's a 19th century instrument! Admittedly we are in an age when originally created timbres and/or musico-technological formulations are often the modus operandi of a piece. Actually, this Concerto began about two years ago when, during one of my creative jogs, the sound of the uppermost register of the piano mingled with wind chimes penetrated my inner ear. The challenge and fascination of exploring and developing this idea into an orchestral situation determined that some day soon I would be writing a work for piano and orchestra. So it was a very happy coincidence when Mona Golabek phoned to tell me she would like discuss the Ford Foundation commission. After covering areas of aesthetics and compositional styles, we found that we had a good working rapport, and she asked if I would accept the commission. The answer was obvious. Then began the intensive thought process on the stylistic essence and organization of the work. Along with this went a renewed study of idiomatic writing for the piano, of the kind Stravinsky undertook with the violin when he began his Violin Concerto. By a stroke of great fortune, the day in February 1972 that I received official notice from the Ford Foundation of the commission, I also received a letter from the Guggenheim Foundation informing me I had been awarded my second fellowship. With the good graces of Zubin Mehta and Ernest Fleischmann, masters of my destiny as a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I was relieved of my orchestral duties during the Hollywood Bowl season. Thus I was able to go to Europe to work and to view the latest trends in music concentrating in London (the current musical melting pot and showcase par excellence), Oslo, Norway, for the Festival of Scandinavian Music called Nordic Days, and Warsaw, Poland, for its prestigious Autumn Festival. Over half the Concerto was completed in that summer and most of the rest during the 72-73 season with the final touches put on during a month as Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy. So much for the external and environmental influences, except perhaps to mention the birds of Sussex in the first movement, the bells of Arhus (Denmark) in the second movement and the bells of Bellagio at the end of the Concerto. Primary in the conception was the personality of Miss Golabek: she is a wonderfully vital and dynamic person and a real virtuoso. Therefore, the soloist in the Concerto is truly the protagonist; it is she (for once we can do away with the generic he) who unfolds the character and intent of the piece. The first section is constructed in the manner of a recitative - completely unmeasured - with letters and numbers by which the conductor signals the orchestra for its participation. This allows the soloist the freedom to interpret the patterns and control the flow and development of the music. The Concerto is actually in one continuous movement but with three large divisions of sufficiently contrasting character to be called movements in themselves. The first 'movement' is based on a few timbral elements: 1) a cluster of very low pitches which at the beginning are practically inaudibly depressed, and sustained silently by the sostenuto pedal, which causes sympathetic vibrating pitches to ring when strong notes are struck; 2) a single powerful note indicated by a black note-head with a line through it indicating the strongest possible sforzando; 3) short figures of various colors sometimes ominous, sometimes as splashes of light or as elements of transition; 4) trills and tremolos which are the actual controlling organic thread starting as single axial tremolos and gradually expanding to trills of increasingly larger and more powerful scope. The 'movement' begins in quiescent repose but unceasingly grows in energy and tension as the stretching of a string or rubber band. When it can no longer be restrained, it bursts into the next section. The second 'movement,' propelled by the released tension, is a brilliant virtuosic display, which begins with a long solo of wispy percussion, later joined in duet with the piano. Not to be ignored, the orchestra takes over shooting the material throughout all its sections like a small agile bird deftly maneuvering through nothing but air, while the piano counterposes moments of lyricism. The orchestra reaches a climax, thrusting us into the third 'movement' which begins with a cadenza-like section for the piano. This moves gently into an expressive section (expressive is not a negative term to me) in which duets are formed with various instruments. There are fleeting glimpses of remembrances past, as a fragmented recapitulation. One glimpse is hazily expressed by strings and percussion in a moment of simultaneous contrasting levels of activity, a technique of which I have been fond and have utilized in various fixed-free relationships, particularly in my Percussion Concerto, Contextures and Games: Collage No. 1. The second half of the third 'movement; is a large coda - akin to those in Beethoven - which brings about another display of virtuosity, this time gutsy and driving, raising the Concerto to a final climax, the soloist completing the fragmented recapitulation concept as well as the work with the single-note sforzando and low cluster from the very opening of the first movement.

SKU: XC.HRMG1835.2

The grass has dried up and the flower has fallen... but you last forever. Therefore, I seek a faith that sets it right. The poignant text from Vachel Lindsey sets up the idea of relying on faith amid the darkness. Movement 2 from Light Shines in the Darkness establishes a dark tone with glimpses of forward certainty.

SKU: FG.55011-455-5

ISBN 9790550114555.

This cycle of carols, to the poetry of Christina Rossetti, was assembled piecemeal over a number of years, gradually acquiring a larger dramatic and harmonic arch shape as new settings were added. I was particularly attracted to Rossetti's conflation of the dark, fallow winter landscape with that of the soul waiting for salvation. The cycle traces the long nights of watchfulness before Christmas, with the great event constantly deferred, only glimpsed periodically in different visions before the music turns inward again to contemplation. The opening carol embodies this spirit, with passages of diffuse, roving harmony interspersed with meditative, lyrical pedals, calling out the night watch and dreaming of a far-off summer of the spirit. Earth Grown Old is a kind of double carol, setting two complete poems, their lines at first presented separately as a still, expectant chorale and a jubilant dance, then progressively interwoven toward a fervent climax before once again receding into quiet. In the bleak mid-winter, which sets a highly compressed version of Rossetti's original poem, presents an enfeebled landscape frozen in time, in dire need of deliverance. A gentle melody weaves its way through static drones, broken by an angels' chorus announcing the joy to come. Love Came Down at Christmas ends the waiting, with its gently falling, overlapping lines building to a final revelation, the mystery of Christmas at last made real.