Clara Wieck’s sincerest wish was that her future husband Robert Schumann turn his extraordinary genius toward the larger and more challenging task of composing orchestral music. Confiding in her diary in 1839 just one year before her marriage she explained that “it would be best if he composed for Orchestra: his imagination cannot find sufficient scope in the Piano…” In the years that followed their marriage Robert Schumann continued to devote much of his attention to Piano music but he also found the time to comply with his beloved Clara’s wish by creating a number of musical pieces composed specifically for Piano andOrchestra. Although Schumann’s genius is most in evidence in his masterful solo Piano compositions and superb lieder his lively and provocative imagination manifests itself with equal aplomb in the works composed for Piano and Orchestra. The same compelling romantic and lyrical qualities that captivate lovers of Schumann’s Piano music are evident in these compositions. Three of his finest are presented here in full score including the A Minor Piano Concerto one of the most popular and frequently performed concertos ever written. All demonstrate his remarkably innovative approach to music diverting substantially from the classic models of the day and display his immense creativity as well as his warmth and sensitivity. Included in this collection of Schumann’s compositions for Piano and Orchestra are: Piano Concerto In A minor Op. 54 (published 1846) Concertstück Op.92 (Introduction and Allegro appassionato; published 1852) Introduction and Allegro Op. 134 (published 1855) These three works by one of the greatest masters of romanticism will delight musicians music lovers and students as well as devotees of Schumann. Pianists will be especially pleased to have these appealing Schumann works in one convenient edition available at

Left Alone for Piano (left hand) and Orchestra was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2014-15. Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and co-commissioned by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Premiered by the WDR Sinfonieorchester and Alexandre Tharaud (piano) concducted by Ilan Volkov on January 29 2016 Cologne. Programme Note: I was born with a right hand that is not fully functional and though it never prevented me from loving playing the piano as well as I could with this physical limitation it hasobviously given me an alternative focus on the whole piano literature and has given me a close relationship with the works written for the left hand by Ravel and others. This repertoire has been with me since my youth. My very first public performance of one of my own works was in autumn 1969. The piece was called October and I played the piano with my left hand and the horn my principal instrument (the only instrument that can be played with only the left hand). Part of the piece requires the performer to play natural harmonics of the horn directly into the open strings of the grand piano to create resonance. The pedal was kept down by an assistant lying on the floor. Through decades the idea of writing a larger work for piano left hand has been in my mind. This new work is not written for a pianist with only one hand but rather by a composer who can only play with the left hand. The title Left alone contains all kinds of references not only to the obvious fact that the left hand is playing alone. Left alone is divided into two large parts each consisting of three smaller movements – in effect six in total. The work was commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and co-commissioned by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Rotterdam Philharmonic and written for Alexandre Tharaud. Hans

Hans Abrahamsen's Concerto For Piano And Orchestra was composed in 1999 by commission for the BIT-20 Ensemble. A complex and multi-layered work opening with highly minimal material and very slowly building to an ecstatic frenzy across the four movements. As the piece progresses Abrahamsen has also included some significant nods towards composers Gyorgy Ligeti (a former teacher of the composer) and Gustav Mahler.The work was premiered at the Ultima Festival in Oslo in 2000 with Anne Marie Abildskov as soloist. I Allegro Volante e nervoso II Adagio innocente e semplice III Tempo de grandegioia IV Fluente ma tranquillo Programmenote: ???The piano concerto starts entirely as I usually start with this filigree in the piano and many simultaneous layers ??? Hans Abrahamsen has explained ???The beginning is music that could continue almost minimalistically ad infinitum. But it doesn???t. Instead it has a seizure after just thirty seconds. It literally comes to a halt!???There is no programmatic structure behind the four-movement course of the concerto but a romantically minded listener may be tempted to interpret the development from a quick stalling of the familiar through the introduction (by the lyrical second movement) of something much more ???innocent and simple??? as it says - something feminine one feels like adding - to the third movement???s flashing firework display of a scherzo which draws the curtain aside for a liberating rush of joy as life after the advent of love. However the undersigned assumes full responsibility for this interpretation.The piano soloist is the undisputed main character in the concerto and plays almost constantly in the first three movements. It is only in the fourth movement that she takes a break and listens. ???The piano stirs up an anthill??? is Hans Abrahamsen???s own description ???and it becomes almost operatic! It is as if the music is about to fall right out over the edge of the abyss at the drastic general

(Solo Piano Part). Par HAWES PATRICK. ?It?s very direct, it?s very honest, it?s very melodic and it?s very beautiful.? Peter Jablonski, pianist. A three-movement work for piano and orchestra written for Peter Jablonski the concerto is a journey of excitement and ? above all ? majesty, through the pain of loss and bereavement, through to victory and the fulfilment of hope. / Date parution : 2022-10-12/ Répertoire / Piano

Hawkes Pocket Scores HPS 1468-Originally a ballet score this 30' work is scored with strings and consists of three movements:'cumnock fair': A 12-minute fantasy based on dance melodies by the 18th-century Cumnock composer John French. The moods range widely from playful rustic archaic ungainly dreamy boisterous stately brutal and grotesque to mysterious and unnerving.'shambards'': Memories of Burnsian folksong are interrupted by new dance tunes built on fragments from the Mad Scene from Act 3 of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor based on the novel by Walter Scott.'shamnation'. Low throbbing in the piano becomes a drumbeat to accompany a fast violin reel using three tunesand following a traditional 8-bar structure. The solo piano part emerges as a counterpoint to the Scottish themes after which the music winds its way through many different keys.

The very lively three-movement Piano Concerto in G major is characterised with regard to style by jazz influences especially in the first and third movements but by late Romantic and impressionist influences in the middle movement.Ravel himself called it 'a concerto in the truest sense of this generic term: With that I want to say that it has been written in the spirit of the concertos by Mozart and Saint-Saëns.'