SKU: HL.14030113

ISBN 9788759866504. Danish.

Siciliano for Cello solo by Hans Abrahamsen (2000). Siciliano can be played as a piece by itself, but it can also be played together with the cello pieces Hymn and Storm and Still as Sonate for cello solo. Then it should be like this in the programme: Sonate for cello solo (1988-2000) I. Hymn (=WH30250) II. Storm and Still (WH30241) III. Siciliano Commissioned by and dedicated to Morten Zeuthen.

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.14028556

ISBN 9788759852446. 8.5x11.75x0.065 inches. English.

This composition was written quickly in a matter of days, however the composer describes the longer process of writing the piece as unconscious preparation. There are opposite elements on display within the piece, fragile coloristic passages give birth to energetic events with clear rhythmic and melodic charachter. More sharpely focused figures pass through different transformations then finally merge back to less dynamic but no less intensive filigration. In bringing these compositional elements together and by forcing opposite modes of expression, the composer has aimed to force the listener to stretch their own sensibility. Work for Cello and Electronics which was premiered by Anssi Karttunen at the Musica Nova Festival, Bremen in May 1988.

SKU: HL.14010203

Piece for solo cello is in three sections. The work starts with an almost inaudible tremolo on a low E and then states a few motifs which are repeated and developed throughout, in a fragmented manner and appearing in different orders. The music returns to a loud low tremolando E at the end, and once again fades into nothing. Piece was written in 1970 and first performed by Thomas Igloi at the Holborn Public Library, London, that year. The work was revised in February 2021.

SKU: BA.BA11071

ISBN 9790006562015. 42 x 29.7 cm inches.

“Now II” is the second part of a triptych of chamber pieces entitled “Profiles of Light”. The first part is written for solo piano (Now I, BA 11073), the second for unaccompanied cello. The two instruments are then combined in the concluding third part, Uriel (BA 11013).

All three pieces were inspired by the Abstract Expressionist paintings of the American artist Barnett Newman. Newman's work has had a formative impact on Matthias Pintscher's artistic philosophy: what does it mean to reduce things to essentials while seeking maximum immediacy of expression? Several of Newman's paintings have a radiant light of uncommon intensity, yet resembling a dark illumination. The same sort of thing is found in the late works of Franz Schubert, where a comparable profundity and retrospective yearning likewise shine through the surface of even the brightest tonalities.

This is a piece about resonances, about the inward and outward givens of existence, about life itself: 'I find the cello a highly suitable instrument for depicting such existential conditions'.