SKU: PR.164002390

UPC: 680160038091.

I became interested in the work of Plato through my friend and collaborator, the writer and philosopher Paul Woodruff. Paul's new translation, with Alexander Nehamas, of the Symposium gave me insights into ancient Greek ways of thinking about Love, Beauty, and Wisdom -- and managed to keep the earthy, and often bawdy side of it all in full view. But their new translation of Plato's later dialogue Phaedrus went even further: the beauty of the speeches is breathtaking, and the discourse itself is enough to keep one awake at night. Basically the Great Speech of Socrates in the Phaedrus dialogue has to do with the place of Eros in the world, and with the conflict in the soul between fleshly pleasure and philosophic discovery. I will not attempt to encapsulate this brilliant discourse in a program note: suffice it to say that reading it gave rise to my two-sided work for clarinet, violin, and piano, Phaedrus. The first movement represents the Philosophic life, and is thus subtitled Apollo's Lyre (Invocation and Hymn). It begins with an unaccompanied melody for the clarinet, which (after a pair of harp-like flourishes for the piano, expands into an accompanied canon. The voices in the dialogue (clarinet and violin) follow each other by a prescribed number of beats, but the music is totally devoid of any meter at all. The piano, representing the lyre, accompanies this lyric love-feast with repeated strummed chords. The canon has three large sections, and ends with violin echoing the unaccompanied clarinet invocation as the sound of the lyre fades. The second movement, called Dionysus' Dream-Orgy (Ritual Dance) presents, after a brief introduction, another kind of unmetered music. Rather than long lyric flights of philosophic song, however, this time we hear a unison dance of unbridled energy and sensual transport. The piece soon forms itself into a loose arch form, with contrasting metered dance sections divided by the unison unmetered orgy tune. Midway through the movement, Apollo's melody returns from the first movement, but it is a temporary reminiscence. The orgiastic dance returns, reaches a climax, and ends with a stomping of feet. While Plato asserts that a proper balance between lust and reason is necessary in all men, he (naturally) gives the nod to Philosophy as the better choice in which to live. Not so in my music: the two sides are meant to coexist and to complement each other. No sides are taken. Phaedrus was commissioned of the Verdehr Trio by Michigan State University. It is dedicated to the Vedehr Trio with great affection and admiration.

SKU: PR.14440515S

UPC: 680160667819. 9 x 12 inches.

In 1979, Martin produced a set of three quintets, in consideration of Gorky's piece Nighttime Enigma Nostalgia. Each is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. One role of music is to evoke. Therefore, Nighttime is a nocturne, a night piece suggestive of flickering shadows, perhaps created by firelight. It is a recurrent setting in human existence. The music opens with the scene of twilight calm, gently disturbed with the slight uncertainty about what is around us, what we cannot see. Later, the clarinet takes on a solo role, and the notes bleed like careless paint into the other instruments that quietly sustain them. Next, the flute takes over the role of solo. The piece ends with a repeated cadence of morning light. (From the performance notes.).

SKU: FG.55011-824-9

ISBN 9790550118249.

Mikko Heiniö's Alla madre (2007) abandons the traditional virtuoso concerto concept: here a large orchestra engages in dialogue with a solo violin. The first movement is called Arrivo, “Arrival: the soloist literally arrives later, and by degrees, playing his/her first two solos offstage. Even then the orchestra continues to take the initiative for a long time. Not until the second movement, entitled Aura, “Air or Wind, does the initiative pass to the solo violin as it sets light to notes in the orchestra harmony like individual lamps. And not until the end of the second movement and the beginning of the third does the solo violin play completely on its own. The title of the first movement, “Arrival, underlines the event, the dramaturgy, whereas that of the second movement, “Aura, alludes to the texture and the shimmering space. The third movement is the most strongly emotional, as the name Carezza, “Caress suggests.

This product includes the solo part and the piano reduction (B4 sized).

The orchestral material is available from the publisher. The orchestration: 3(III+picc)3(III+ca)3(III=bcl)3(III=cfg)-4331-13-hp-str.

SKU: LM.26849

ISBN 9790230968492.

With Gab - Care-Free - Two Stomp for you - Walkin'in a Louisiana street - As she like it - So goes the life - Robert's tune - Hi chazz - Eastern nostalgia - Around it - Goodbye Take - Whistling in the street - Leave me here - One Note for you - For Chris and Michel.

SKU: BR.EB-9413

ISBN 9790004188873. 9 x 12 inches.

For a long time after Romanticism had come to the fore, it was generally agreed that Brahms somehow did not get it: History and Progress - it was thought - were proceeding along one clear path and Brahms - who was composing sonatas and symphonies instead of nocturnes and symphonic poems - had taken the wrong way. Almost one century later, Schonberg wrote an essay, Brahms, der Fortschrittliche (Brahms, the progressive), in which he explained that it wasn't like that at all.Fully assuming the risk to appear somehow irreverent, I have to confess: Over the years, I came to the conclusion that the present - and the future - can be created only by loving the past. As Brahms had shown us, it is only by accepting the challenge of taking our heritage into our own hands, that we can create something new. We cannot avoid engaging with the past. Therefore, starting with my Sinfonia n. 1, I began to flirt with such a strong and effective musical structure like the sonata form. I re-read and freely transformed it, because it is a sturdy and resilient structure, but also a theatrical and colorful one. For me, it is a happy structure. And I think that today more than ever we need something like this: We need to find places - even imaginary ones - where we can give happiness a form of its own.Nicola Campogrande, December 2020

World premiere: Bologna/Italy, Streaming, April 11, 2021Commissioned by the Fondazione Musica Insieme.

SKU: HL.14004213

9.0x12.0x0.175 inches.

Five Pieces for Violin and Orchestra was commissioned by Frederick Grinke and completed on 20 December 1961. The BBC Symphony Orchestra with Frederick Grinke (violin) and conducted by the composer, gave the first performance on 31 July 1962 at the Royal Albert Hall, London during the BBC Proms season. This work is so constructed that each piece is complete in itself and can be played separately, while at the same time the whole set of five constitutes a structural unit. A basic motif consisting of a rising semitone followed by a falling tone, and its inversion plays an important part in every piece. Thus the first piece, which is of a slow and meditative character, begins with this theme in the bass. It is also heard in the first entry of the solo part, and thereafter every episode is in some way derived from it. The next piece, a vigorous and strongly marked 'allegro', uses the semitone of the original figure as its starting point. A second theme appears, first on the horns and is later taken up by the solo violin, while a third section has the initial idea as its accompaniment. Next comes an extended scherzo in free form very closely based on initial motif. The fourth is a purely melodic piece containing allusions in its middle section to the basic figure. Here the strings only are used for accompaniment. In the first section, violas and cellos are divided in the middle section, and all the strings are used in the last, which is otherwise an almost exact repetition of the opening. The Finale is a lighter movement than the others, concerned mainly with giving the soloist material for display, but not unconnected with what has gone before.

SKU: AY.VLP3174PM

ISBN 9790543572980.

The material introduced by the piano of the beginning a solo is the one that serves of vertebral axis of the work, that has nearly the form of a rondo. This introduction is based on isolated, naked notes, with a constant rythm of the eighths that create a big intervalic space between them. Later on, that will be used as a support to an espressive melody of the violin, that will take this material and will expose it in pizzicato. In this way will be used as accompaniment to a very suggestive and lyric fragment of the piano that covers nearly all the registers of the instrument. This will lead to a second section of the work, of a very rythmic and intense character of both instruments. The third section, the most expressive of the work, it's iniciated with some chords of the piano that little by litlle dissapear and remembers the introduction. Here, the violin develops a melody of big lirism, supported by the piano witht he material of the introduction, but this time there are non isolated notes but full chords that disintegrate again at the end, taking up again the idea of a fragment of the first section of the piece by means of the piano. Far from free instrumental effects, the work looks mainly for a direct communication with the listener.