SKU: HL.49003452

ISBN 9790001033947. UPC: 073999352757. 9.0x12.0x0.16 inches. German - English - French.

3d to 6th positions without thumb positions. Moderately difficult.

SKU: HL.48025036

UPC: 196288020813.

The piece was commissioned by a colleague Brett Dean of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the violist Walter Kussner, as part of a CD project with works for solo viola in 1998/99. Since then, the composer himself has played it himself countless times in concerts andlectures. Here it is now in a congenial adaptation for cello. The title Intimate Decisions comes from a painting by Dean's wife, theAustralian painter Heather Betts, and indicates the private nature of the music. According to Dean, writing a piece for a solo string instrument was strangely similar to writing a personal letter or an intense conversation with a close friend. The piece begins with a short series of individual intervals of a rather intangible character, followed by a more emphatic motif of a minor sixth and minor ninth, and later a chain of harmonies whirring down the lower strings. The various developing characters go through an increasingly decisive, ultimately dramatic conversation, in rhapsodic alternation with flighty virtuosity, but also calm and delicacy, only to fade away like an echo at the end.

SKU: HL.50486672

ISBN 9790080142240. UPC: 840126969634. 9.0x12.0x0.112 inches. Hungarian, English, German. Gyorgy Kurtag.

Signs, games and messages are compositions of differing length, written for different occasions: musical letters, tributes, playful games with instrumental technique. In the past year pieces for violin, viola and for string trio have been published in this series.

SKU: HL.14035889

ISBN 9788759859285. English-Danish.

I - Lento
II - Imposante
III - Andante

Programme Note

In my early television remembrance I recall a broadcast with Samuel Beckett, one of the fathers of the absurd play and drama. At one time Beckett looked the viewer (the camera) in the eye and said:'What! - is the Word'. I have not since been able to forget it, obviously, having borrowed this ambiguous sentence as title for this short cello sonata.

The fact that it is conceived as a unity is obvious from the fact that the two outer movements are closely related. The long, immediately recognizable melodic line which dominates the first movement appears in the third movement aswell, first in an inverted version and then almost identical to its original appearance, only shorter.
In contrast, the middle movement is a fast one, constantly and intensely on the move, with many changes of pulse and meters, as well as large melodic leaps. And while the outer movements each are composed as a single melodic line, the middle movement makes extensive use of the cello as a polyphonic instrument employing lots of chords, double stops and flageolet effects.

Per Norgard (2010).