This authentic arrangement of ten movements from the Water Music suites dates from Handel’s lifetime but is published here for the first time edited by the distinguished Handel scholar Donald Burrows. Its simple light scoring makes it excellently suited to use by schools and small instrumental groups. It can be performed in many different combinations from the original two violins bassoon and continuo to string quartet or wind-based group.

Corpus Cum Figuris is a uniform composition in three major parts. The first part is a slow marche funébre a kind of prologue with dark and sombre sounds and a massive wall of chords which leads us to the other part of the works where the static and solemn atmosphere is suddenly stopped and replaced by a rhythmic/melodic ritual which accelerates the music. In the third part the block structure is softened gradually different figurations and stylistic elements arise to live their own lives: distant waltzes and pictures from the Middle Ages appear in this gigantic sonorous body. After a wild percussion orgy a short flash-back and a scream from the edge end Corpus cumFiguris. The piece has no literal content at all even though the title leads the thought to Adrian Leverkühn?s Apocalipsis cum Figuris from Thomas Mann?s Doctor Faustus. More likely my piece will arouse associations as with all my music. It has to be heard in it?s own conditions in this case as a big body of music or perhaps as a great screen where the details of course are part of the whole body but at the same time are foreign and odd. It is as if one climbs a mountain and from the top of that mountain discovers a world which is completely different from expected. Corpus cum Figuris for 20 musicians was composed in 1984 commissioned by Ensemble InterContemporain and the Danish Radio. Ensemble InterContemporain world premiered the work in April 1985 conducted by Peter Eötvös. The piece was also played at the ISCM-festival in Amsterdam by Netherland Radio Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ernest Bour.

Work for Chamber Ensemble dating from 1989.The composer writes: The Title SHADOWLAND refers on the one hand to a blurred ‘Landscape’ of shadows where small shadows are formed behind other shadows and where the outlines are constantly disintegrating. On the other hand the title refers to the fanciful and unreal landscapes I felt in the music while I was writing it. SHADOWLAND has four movements with proportions 4-7-4-3. These proportions can be found on various levels from the smallest cell to the largest form. The first movement is divided into four parts which have exactly the same proportions as the whole pjece and behind the fastrunning melodies and trills thatdominate the whole movement one can hear in the second third and fourth parts anticipations of the second third and fourth movements respectively. The second movement begins at the edge of silence with almost unperceptible glissandi and indistinct chorales. Gradually the hushed landscape is drowned out by sudden expressive melodic outbursts and ends with violent dance rhythms. The third movement is built up of clouds of staccato tones and is a further development of the pointillistic ideas from CLAIROBSCUR. In th last movement the horn plays a long soloistic melody line which the other instruments imitate and echo. These echoes swamp the horn line from time to time. SHADOWLAND was commissioned by and dedicated to The London Sinfonietta.

There are three mysteries about this piece by Purcell originally scored for Viols. When it was written for what purpose it was written and why the eccentric title ‘Chacony’ rather than the French ‘chaconne’ are questions whoseanswers are all shrouded in the mists of time. The suggested dates of early 1680’s and as a piece of light music for some sort of theatrical performance almost answer two of the three questions. The Chacony is scored here forString quartet but could be played by a larger ensemble.

This work for chamber ensemble was written for Gregory Knowles and The Fires Of London who gave the first performance at the 1982 Lucerne Festival at the Municipal Theatre of Lucerne.Miniature score. Duration c. 40mins.

Raymond Premru was for many years the principal Bass Trombone of London?s Philharmonia Orchestra as well as having been a member of the Philip Johnson Brass Ensemble an active jazz musician teacher and composer. He listed hisinfluences as Berg Prokofiev Bartok Ives jazz and Bach though what emerged from his sensibility is diatonic modernist and skillfully suited to whatever instrumentation he chose.The five movements which appear typeset in thisscore A Tale From Long Ago Blues March Of Knights And Castles Le Bateau Sur Léman and Petite March are sometimes performed as a shortened version of the Divertimento to great effect.

Commissioned by the St Magnus Festival with funds from the Scottish Arts Council. First performed by The Fires of London in June 1978 in St Magnus Cathedral Kirkwall.The work takes as its starting-point a sequence of dreams related by Franz Kafka in his diaries of 1910. Eduardova was a Russian ballerina whom Kafka had seen dancing in Prague in the early part of this century. The music of The Dancer Eduardova is based on dancing particularly the csardas which in his dream Kafka had asked the dancer to perform just one time more. Kafka's dream-sequences contain the uncomfortable contrasts of the grace of the dancer and the loathsome gestures of unconscious intriguers;there are abrupt changes of mood to sorrow and despair. Flowers presented by all the Princes of Europe appear in the dreams as do trains and trams on which Eduardova travels with two vigorous violinists.

For Miles was commissioned by the Composers’ Ensemble with funds from the London Arts Board. It was first performed on 29th June 1994 by the Composers’ Ensemble at St.John’s Smith Square London. Scored for solo Trumpet Oboe/english horn 2 Clarinets Viola Cello Bass (with C extension). Duration: 11 minutes. Parts available on hire.

Work for Chamber Ensemble commissioned by the Swedish National Concert Institute.

This consists of five short movements. They were written for the Sunday lunchtime magazine programme ‘Not Now I’m Listening’ and were first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 6 November 1977. The work was first performed in concert bythe Fires of London at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival.