SKU: ST.H474

ISBN 9790220222900.

A Short Sonata is a work written at around Grade 8 standard for euphonium and piano. In each of the work's three movements, different qualities of the instrument are utilised and explored. In the first movement, an Allegro in 6/8 time, these qualities are the instrument's general agility, and its ability to play fast-moving melodies in a way that drives the music forward. Throughout, different ways of phrasing similar material are used to create interest and a varied sound. In the second, slow movement, the resonant and majestic way in which the euphonium can deliver lyrical melodic lines is explored. The movement is made up of four long phrases which peak dynamically at the third, giving room for interpretation and feeling. The third movement exploits the instrument's ability to play loudly and aggressively, using lots of accented notes, hairpin crescendos and quick double-tonguing.

A Short Sonata was the winner of the first Stainer & Bell Award for Brass Composition, held at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff in May 2010.

SKU: CY.CC2769

As the title suggests the work dying and dancing for Euphonium solo and Piano accompaniment is in two parts, which are played without a pause between the two.

The first part, an adagio, is not necessarily meant to be evocative of the actual act of passing away, but more perhaps of the contemplation and reflection upon one's life as that time approaches, and particularly of sorrow over regret and disappointment. The unsettled mood of the music reflects this bitterness, and stands in contrast to the expansive peace of the grave, heard at the beginning and end of the adagio.

Dance, with ironic wit, the second part, is the other side of the same coin; perhaps humor of the gallows describes its spirit. At once fatalist and mocking, it brings to mind the words of the ancient teacher Koheleth, The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

I was pleased to compose dying and dancing in 2013 for Mark Kellogg, a superb Euphonium artist and my former trombone iProfessor at the Eastman School of Music.

SKU: CY.CC2879

The Trombone/Euphonium solos of Gardell Simons have been sadly forgotten over the years. Atlantic Zephyrs is the only one known to most. Gregory Cox has compiled five of them in a new collection:
Atlantic Zephyrs
The Gondolier
Polka Caprice
The Volunteer
The Weldon Polka
The solos are about 5 minutes in length each and are appropriate for Intermediate level and above (range goes up to high C). They are light and delightful, harking back to the turn-of-the last century in style.
Cherry Classics is pleased to have brought them back to life, set in their original format in the Vintage Brass Collection.

SKU: CY.CC2516

Le Rossignol or the Nightingale is originally a vocalise for Soprano solo from Saint-Saen's incidental orchestral music for the play, Parysatis written in 1902. This 4 minute work is all about mood. For this arrangement, Mr. Sauer transposes into the key of C, which lays perfectly for all of the bird-like calls that are in phrases which are slurred. The music has a lot of ad lib. tempo sections which gives the performer plenty of time to create that magic call of the Nightingale. Early writers thought it was the female that sang, but in fact it is the male. The Nightingale usually sings at night or just before dawn when other birds are silent and has a strong spontaneous song with an impressive range of trills and whistles.

SKU: CY.CC2722

The Chants du Rhin (Songs of the Rhine), a cycle of six pieces, based on poems by Joseph Mery, were written in 1865, and Bizet performed two of them on 16 April 1866 at a soiree of the Beaujolais Philharmonic Society. The songs are grouped symmetrically around La bohemienne as the central piece, framed by two meditatively yearning pieces (in E and D flat major) and two vividly exuberant ones (similarly in E and D flat major), with L'aurore serving as an introduction.

In this cycle Bizet takes up the theme of the gypsy girl which had already entered European music in the operas The Bohemian Girl by the Irish composer Michael William Balfe and Verdi's Il trovatore, as well as in Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano. Bizet will return to it one year later in La jolie fille de Perth and ten years later in Carmen. The fourth piece Les confidences shows similarities in tonality, structure and motifs to the middle part of the third movement of Chopin's Sonata in B minor.

This version includes parts in B-flat treble clef as well as bass clef.