SKU: HL.14008406

ISBN 9780711948716.

A work for solo violin and orchestra, commissioned by Donald McDonald for the 21st birthday of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the 60th birthday of the composer. It was first performed in November 1993 in Glasgow, by James Clark and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Maxwell Davies. The spell is one quoted by George Mackay Brown in his book An Orkney Tapestry: 'Let not plough be put to acre except a fiddle cross first the furrow.' Davies's dancing concerto imagines the fiddler following a route from field to field, from dance to dance, accompanied by a bunch of companions in the form of an orchestra. As the music goes on, so it gets brighter and livelier, moving from the dark colouring of clarinets, bassoons and strings to full ensemble with prominent brass and (solo) tuned percussion, as if the dancers as much as the fields were beginning to glow with new life. Score (miniature). Duration c. 20mins.

SKU: BR.PB-15132

ISBN 9790004214688. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Bruch's evergreen for the first time in UrtextThanks to the premiere performance by Joseph Joachim and to the release of the printed edition in 1868, Max Bruch's Violin Concerto no. 1 zipped onto the road to success and has never left it since. Yet from the preface of the BreitkopfUrtext edition,one can infer how things looked like behind the dazzling facade. After the world premiere, the composer struggled for the definitive form. He wrote 3, 4 development sections in the finale, and sought the advice of celebrated virtuosi such as Joseph Joachim and Ferdinand David to revise the solo part. And after all this was done (see above), Bruch suffered under the work's popularity: Have I written nothing but this one concerto?The new Urtext edition is based primarily on the first edition. Next to the main source and the autograph, what is supremely interesting is a solo part with entries by Joachim and Bruch. It confirms how intensively the two men collaborated on honing the final form of the work.

SKU: HL.14028003

ISBN 9788759862896.

Poul Ruders Polydrama (Manyfold Event) for cello and orchestra, is the last part of a drama trilogy otherwise consisting of Dramaphonia for piano and 11 instruments and Monodrama for percussion and 32 instruments. In this abstract drama, the individual listener is left entirely to his own associations. The composer has compared polydrama with the gradual defoliation of a big tree: the vigorously growing organism is attacked by a swarm of locusts until, finally, nothing remains but bare branches in a landscape of long shadows; a solitary, singing bird remains, however, like a streak of hope in an increasingly dark and pessimistic universe.

SKU: HL.14023249

ISBN 9788759861981. 11.75x16.5x0.45 inches. English.

Tenebrae (1982), a single-movement cello concerto, commissioned and premiered by Rostropovich who praised the composer for his fine understanding and command of the rich timbre of the instrument. It is a convincing and almost nightmarish work containing music which leaves a tremendous impact on the listener. Not least in the central section where ghastly and terrifying apparitions are invoked out of the darkness. The final poetical section of the work is directly inspired by the description of the closing movement of Leverkuhn's Cantata in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus.