SKU: OT.21125

ISBN 9789655051117. 8.27 x 11.69 inches.

The five short movements for solo cembalo are brief, personal prayers that depict how the subject manages a range of feelings and emotions. The miniatures each represent a different emotional state: reflection, searching, meditation, agitation, and resolution. Each is a small-scale representation of a grand, wide-ranging prayer of supplication.
As a composer, performer, and researcher of early music, writing for cembalo allows me not only to express my special connection to the instrument and the period in which it flourished, but also to present its contemporary dimensions as a rich and versatile instrument.
The piece was composed at the request of Hagai Yodan, who performs it with great skill.
Daniel Akiva is a composer, performer, and educator whose performances on guitar and lute have won great acclaim. Mr. Akiva graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem in 1981, where he studied classical guitar with Haim Asulin and composition with Haim Alexander. In 1987 he completed his studies at the Geneva Conservatorium in Switzerland where he studied lute with Jonathon Rubin and composition with Jean Ballisa. For many years, he headed the Music Department at the WIZO High School for the Arts in Haifa, which he founded in 1986, and served as the Artistic Director of the Guitar Gems Festival from 2006-2019. As part of his work at WIZO High School, he has developed a method for teaching free improvisation that has been incorporated into the music program at the school.
Mr. Akiva has appeared in concert as a guitarist and lutist and given master classes in Israel, Europe, Russia, the United States, and Latin America. Daniel Akiva’s compositional output includes works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choir, voice and guitar, piano, and chamber orchestra. His works have been recorded on twelve CDs, the latest of which, Malchut, was issued by OR-TAV in 2014.
A native of Haifa whose family has lived in Israel for over five hundred years, he was steeped in the Sephardic (Jewish-Spanish) tradition from his youth. Much of his compositional output has been devoted to a dialogue with the music of the Sephardic Jews. Daniel Akiva has also maintained a creative dialogue over many years with the poets and writers Amnon Shamash, Rivka Miriam, and Avner Peretz.

SKU: FG.55011-764-8

ISBN 9790550117648.

The title of Esa Pietilä’s solo harpsichord work Fata morgana (2019) refers to a special weather con-dition, which creates illusory effect of mirage-like fairy castle-like monuments in the horizon of the sea. The piece brings forth the frightening bass sonority on double manual, full size harpsichord and the brightness on the treble and makes a dialogue out of them. “I got fasci-nated by the sonority, character and power of the low register sound on the instrument, es-pecially when used in non-traditional way and found some kind of especially delightful and outlandish cluster-mud and airy glimmering things which seem to play together, the com-poser describes. The challenges of the piece lie in rhythmical ideas, which are surprisingly multi-faceted and in the short, improvised section.

Duration: c. 6’

Esa Pietilän soolo-cembalolle tehdyn sävellyksen otsikko Fata morgana (2019) viittaa erityisen sääil-miön aiheuttamaan illusatoriseen kangastuksen tapaiseen efektiin, joka tuo esiin satulinnojen kaltaisten rakennelmien ilmaantumisen meren horisonttiin. Sävellys tuo esiin cembalon bas-sorekisterin pelottavuuden sekä diskantin kirkkauden ja käy niillä vuoropuhelua. Haltioiduin cembalon alarekisterin erityisestä soinnista, karakteerista ja voimasta, jos sitä käyttää hyvinkin ei-perinteisesti. Löysin myös erityisen hauskasti soivaa klusteri-mutaa ja ilmavaa kimallusta, jotka sointuvat yhteen, Pietilä kuvaa sävellystään. Kappaleen haasteena ovat rytmisesti yllät-tävät ja monitahoiset ideat sekä lyhyt improvisaatiojakso.