SKU: BO.B.3664

Cuarteto San Petersburgo (The Saint Petersburg Quartet) was written between January and March 2011. It owes its name to the fact that Saint Petersburg has been a very significant city for me. I was invited there in 1988 to take part in a big contemporary music festival, but my uninterrupted bond with the city started on 2002, thanks to the negotiations of my friend and pupil Albert Barbeta. Since then, I have constantly travelled there in order to record a considerable part of my repertoire: seventeen pieces. In addition to the concerts we went to, I took the opportunity during my trips to visit the well-known conservatoire where so many great personalities from the world of music composition once taught, and the place that launched the most important violin school in the whole of Russia: the school of Leopoldo Auer. Spending a long time in Auer's classroom writing my concert for violin and orchestra was an unforgettable experience for me. His large portrait motivated me even further.

Cuarteto San Petersburgo evokes many of the most cherished and moving moments that I have had in this city. It is structured in four movements. The first one, Allegretto-Allegro, opens with an introduction that sets forth the two main themes, amid a soft and elastic atmosphere. The Allegro starts vigorously and in it we find changes in the tempo and moments of mystery, as well as certain seclusion, returning then to the emphatic theme where the counterpoint finds its place. The movement ends placidly.

The Scherzo-marcato that follows is marked by a persistent rhythm of triplets that carries on from beginning to end. The tempo does not change, but brief and decided themes are introduced, as well as passages of counterpoint. Brief and dissonant chords are heard throughout the movement, which ends vigorously.

The third movement, Ut, is a very special one. For a while already I had been playing with the idea of writing a movement that was to have the tonality C as a leitmotiv. This one is made up by two slow and static parts. In the first one, the first violin plays pizzicatti-glissandi. In the second, the first violin and particularly the violoncello settle on C while the other two instruments produce descending chromatic harmonies.

Finally, the Introduccion-Presto (the Introduction-Presto). It starts with some bucolic passages which remind us of the introduction to the first movement. A fast and energetic Presto suddenly erupts. A kind of moto perpetuo which alternates with two expressive passages and, towards the end, a viola and violoncello tremolo, all of great mystery and expectation, make way for a resounding finale marcato.

SKU: HL.50565834

Tarab premiered by David Grimal in le Volcan, Scene Nationale du Havre, on April 23rd 2010. Born in 1948 in Rome, Philippe Hersant studied music at the Paris Conservatory, notably in the composition class of Andre Jolivet, before residing at the Casa Velasquez from 1970 to 1972 and then at the Villa Medici from 1978 to 1980. Since 1973 he has been a producer for radio broadcasts with France Musiques . Refusing to play tricks with history, Philippe Hersant has forged a language that extends the course of Western music as a whole, and, without ever seeking to establish a school, he was one of the first of his generation to place himself, once more, in the domain of tonality and modality. He does not, for all that, banish all neo-classical tendencies. On the contrary, he champions the mannerism and the deep subjectivity of his memory as sources and guides to creation.

SKU: MA.EMR-58956

Stick Game / Peasant Costume / Standing Still / Mountain Horn Song / Romanian Garden Gate / Little One.

SKU: BT.EMBZ2524

English-German-Hungarian.

An Evening in the Village was composed in 1908 as no. 5 of the Ten Easy Piano Pieces. It has become one of Bartók s favorite works, which the composer himself was fond of playing at recitals. As he explained in an American interview, it was an original composition that is ... with themes of my own invention but ... the themes are in the style of the Hungarian-Transylvanian folk tunes. There are two themes. The first one is a parlando-rubato-rhythm and the second one is more in a dance-like rhythm. The second one is more or less the imitation of a peasant flute playing. Bartók also orchestrated the piece in 1931 as no. 1 of Hungarian Sketches.

SKU: M7.DOHR-12565

ISBN 9790202025659.