Score-Henry Cowell's Seven Rituals Of Man uses music to explore the journey of Man from Birth to Death similar to the All the world’s a stage monologue from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Symphony No.11 reflects the work and struggle love dance and play mystical imagination and lament for death all the stages of a man's life. The seven rituals are all very different and alternate between relatively conventional scoring for strings and winds and some really unusual writing for full orchestra with extensive percussion.

Based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream this work by one of England's greatest composers features all the fine qualities for which Henry Purcell is celebrated - wonderful invention keen dramatic instinct and lively characterizations. Highlights include the lovely soprano air O let me weep a series of songs about the seasons and the magnificent bass solo Next winter comes slowly. Reproduced from an early authoritative score it is certain to be prized by musicians and music lovers alike.

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) held numerous appointments at the Royal court and Westminster Abbey and is considered by many to be the greatest ever English-born composer. His prolific work covered all fields: orchestral ecclesiastical operatic theatrical incidental and chamber music were all enriched by his output. Fantazias And In Nomines is a collection of his 15 Fantasies and 2 In Nomines Z. 731-747. Purcell is credited with popularising the hitherto arcane form of the Fantasy perhaps most famously in his Fanstasia Upon One Note where a middle C is sustained throughout in live performances this issometimes played by a volunteer from the audience!This full score edition has been edited by the renowned musicologist Robert Thurston Dart.

Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki's career spans more than 40 years dating from the post-Stalinist era of the mid 1950s and embracing a catalogue of more than 70 acknowledged works. It was not however until the phenomenal success of histhird symphony Symphony of Sorrowful Songs Op 36 which brought the composer world-wide renown through its numerous performances and recordings that his music reached an extended audience outside his native Poland. Since thenthe directness and emotional impact of his music have established him as one of the major figures of contemporary music.

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Flos Campi for SATB wordless chorus Viola solo and Orchestra. Study score.This work is one of Vaughan Williams's most enigmatic pieces. Although the six movements all borrow their titles from the Old Testament's Song of Solomon the Chorus never articulates a single word. Instead it serves as a section of the Orchestra creating an elegant vocal texture and backdrop to the Viola's haunting solo lines.Flos Campi was premiered in October 1925 by the violist Lionel Tertis singers from the RCM and the Queen's Hall Orchestra directed by Sir Henry Wood.

Poul Ruders' Handel Variations for Orchestra (2009) -Ninety Symphonic Reflections on Eight Bars by Georg Friedrich Handel.Commissioned by and dedicated to the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra in celebration of their 75th anniversary 2010. Premiered by The Aarhus Symphony Orchestra conducted by Giancarlo Andretta at the Aarhus Concert Hall 14 January 2010. Programme noteThe short feisty Bourrée from Handel´s famous Water Music (First Suite in F major) has for some years been hovering at the back of my mind as possessing the perfectpotential for a series of variations. Not unlike the short 'morsel' by Henry Purcell (the witches Ho-ho-ho-chorus from the opera Dido and Aeneas) which kicks off the ten variations of my orchestral work Concerto in Pieces the music per se is not particularly interesting but it nevertheless grows on you and is difficult to get rid of. It is merely a handful of sequences (a technique much used in the Baroque era - a method in which the same motif is being shifted up and down in a specified order). Actually it is only the first eight bars of the Bourrée which I haul through the wringer.It would be obvious to assume that Handel Variations make up a sequel to Concerto in Pieces but in spite of the similarity in character between the two chosen themes the Handel Variations are far more symphonically coherent. There are no less than ninety (!) variations and each variation (they are relatively short ranging from four up to forty-something bars) runs seamlessly into the next creating a huge symphonic body of constantly changing colours. I set out with the original theme without interfering but the 'erosion' begins to gnaw away at the theme already from the first variation. Imagine a vast gallery of Handel portraits in which Georg Friedrich appears at first fully recognizable but then the 'disfiguration' sets in and

Tam O’Shanter was first performed at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert on 17 August 1955 with Malcolm Arnold conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was received with tremendous enthusiasm and was without doubt the most popular novelty during the 1955 season of Promenade Concerts. The composer is at pains to point out that whereas the earlier overture Beckus the Dandipratt is not descriptive but merely a musical impression Tam O’Shanter is very definitely programme music.

Henry Mancini's concert albums and countless live concerts featured some of his finest work as an arranger. This well-crafted medley features four of the Andrew Lloyd Webber's beloved songs from the classic Broadway show.Includes: Superstar Everything's Alright King Herod's Song I Don't Know How To Love Him.

Commissioned by the BBC. Premiere: 23 July 1982 Henry Wood Promenade Concert Royal Albert Hall London.The work is cast in four distinct movements though as in Wood's violin concerto there is only one pause in the music between the second and third; even here the break is minimised in effect by a resumption of motivic arguments. In terms both of harmonic structure and of expressive development the four movements seem to have been conceived as asingle unified progression. While melodic and harmonic details are both derived from an intensive working of a handful of intervallic figures in a way that owes much to his earlier serialism Wood’s handling is here free enoughto encompass a large-scale sense of tonal structure as well. Ths same tritone that inflicted so much of the melodic writing in Wood's 'cello concerto also affects the symphony. The music struggles to escape from an uncertain E/Eflat area which dominates the first movement towards an eventual unequivocal A major in the work’s final pages. Emotionally however this trajectory more closely resembles that of the Third Quartet - except that where thequartet opens in frozen despair the symphony begins in tumultuous violence.

Superb authoritative German editions (Henry Litolff's Verlag) of Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21; Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36; Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major (Eroica), Op. 55; and Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60.

Suite Nach Henry Purcell, F. Str.Quart. Od. Str.Orch.. Par TAKACS JENO. 2Vl Va Vc (Strorch)/ Répertoire / Orchestre

Suite Nach Henry Purcell, F. Str.Quart. Od. Str.Orch.. Par TAKACS JENO. 2Vl Va Vc (Strorch)/ Répertoire / Orchestre

Création 04/05/2012 - Festival Musica Viva, Munich (Allemagne) - Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, George Benjamin (direction) Commanditaire Musica Viva, New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra