Four Pieces For Orchestra was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2000-2003. Programme note: In 1983 Hans Abrahamsen wrote the first seven of his Ten Studies for Piano. In the early eighties most composers who wrote for the piano were still making strenuous efforts to distance themselves from the instrument?s romantic past for example treating it as a percussion instrument rather than exploiting its expressive ?singing? potential. The piano?s modern identity as a mechanical rational emotionally cool instrument is reflected in Abrahamsen?s studies 5 7; but in the first four studies Abrahamsen allows the piano to?recollect? its past: especially what the composer calls ?the golden German romantic time full of expression night timelessness dream and the irrational?. Accordingly these first four studies were given German one might specifically say Schumanesque - titles: Traumlied (?Dreamsong?) Sturm (?Storm?) Arabeske (?Arabesque?) and Ende (?End?). While Abrahamsen was in no way dissatisfied with the first four Studies as piano music he soon felt the urge to expand them in both time and space. In their new identity as Four Pieces for Orchestra created between 2000-2003 the original studies nearly doubled in length while the forces required expanded from one soloist to an orchestra of Mahlerian/Straussian dimensions including instruments beloved by the late-romantics: Wagner tubas bass trumpet guitar mandolin and the hammer used so memorably in Mahler?s Sixth Symphony and Alban Berg?s Three Pieces for Orchestra. The results are not so much ?arrangements? of the four piano studies more recompositions. A helpful comparison might be made with certain painters: Cézanne portraying the same mountain from different angles; or Monet obsessively returning to Rouen Cathedral in different lights and weather conditions. Abrahamsen himself remembers an important visit to the Munch Museum in Oslo where he saw how Munch painted the same subject

A Celtic Christmas Celebration-The joy and hope of Christmas are celebrated in this new Celtic-styled cantata from the pen that brought you The Mystery and the Majesty and Winter's Grace. This jubilant work is filled with tuneful carols thoughtful narration and sparkling orchestrations. Traditional melodies form the foundations of this tapestry of lights bringing to your holiday presentation a pleasing mixture of choirs carols and candlelight. Presented in both SAB and SATB formats a full line of support products is available including a digital resource kit complete with PowerPoint images rehearsal tips and art files to assist in the creation of your program. Two orchestration options areavailable: a Celtic consort and full orchestra.

Nico Muhly's It Remains To Be Seen was written in 2006 for for full Orchestra and has a duration of approximately 11 minutes. Composers Note: It Remains to be Seen was written for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute’s 40th Anniversary Gala in July 2006. The piece begins with a chord identical to the one at the end of Stravinsky’s Firebird suite and proceeds into a series of charged nocturnal episodes. I wanted to treat the feeling of having just heard music and being expected to make one’s own – referencing the experience of leaving a BSO concert at the shed walking back to BUTI on a curvy back road arguing about music in pairs and threes and at the sign of bright headlights from behind reorganizing in single file as a car filled with happy concert-goers speeds by. The piece is a nine-minute navigation of an excited occasionally illuminated dark road filled with arguing cars fragments of remembered music and a constant propulsive pulse. Nico Muhly

Symphonic Poem On The Life Of A Star - Partitura. Par COLLA ALBERTO. Symphonic Poem On The Life Of A Star - Partitura / Musique contemporaine / Répertoire / Orchestre