29 Pieces by 18 Composers-29 pieces by 18 of Boosey & Hawkes most prominent composers. Includes works by John Adams Béla Bartók Benjamin Britten Aaron Copland Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Rachmaninoff Richard Strauss Igor Stravinsky and others

Chaconne. Par LERDAHL FRED. Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music. My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach’s D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern. My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Lili Boulanger was the sister of the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger who taught Aaron Copland Elliott Carter and Philip Glass amongst others. She was a composer for the last 10 years of her tragically short life - she died at 25 - and her music stands in the main line of French music exemplified by Faure somewhat tinged with the influence of Debussy's Impressionism. It is generally beautiful delicately coloured and touching. These challenging 'Two Pieces for Violin and Piano' exemplify these qualities. The Nocturne begins sparsely with bare octave figures wound about with a theme built from a repetitive rise-and-fall figure. As the texture become thickerthe violin becomes more virtuosic and begins to climb. There is no harmonic resolution until the final ppp note in the top register which is answered by an low octave from the piano. The Cortege is more lively without being fast. Shifting rhythmic accents tricky runs and contrasting dynamics make this an exciting piece.

in six movements-Appalachian Spring was composed in 1943-44 as a ballet for Miss Martha Graham on a commission from the Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation. It was first performed by Miss Graham and her company at the Coolidge Festival in the Library of Congress Washington D.C. on October 30th 1944.