SKU: FG.55011-372-5
ISBN 9790550113725.
Images of the sea figure prominently throughout my life and memories: from holidays on the Atlantic coast during my Canadian childhood to my current Baltic home, and the imagined, only later experienced Mediterranean of my ancestral heritage. As an immigrant (son of an immigrant) bound to two northern countries, the sea is emblematic of my twin homelands, from the expanses of water surrounding them to those separating them. A Mari usque ad Mare. The sea is also an enduring image of the unknown, of expanses unexplored, of the raw power of nature and, for too many currently, of terror holding a hope of refuge - or the pain of loss. Such disparate ideas were captured for me in the seascapes of the New York painter MaryBeth Thielhelm, whom I met in 2008 during a residency on the Gulf of Mexico. Her vast, abstract, nearly monochromatic depictions of imaginary seas in wildly varying moods were the catalyst for a concerto where the piano is frequently far from a hero battling a collective, but rather acts as a channel for elemental forces surging up from the orchestra, floating - sometimes barely so - on its constantly shifting surface. There are few themes to speak of, beyond a handful of iconic ideas that periodically cycle upward. Rather, the piano's material is largely an ornamentation of the more primal rhythmic and harmonic impulses from the orchestra below - a poetic interpretation, if you will, of the more immediate experience of facing the vastness of some unknown body of water. The title Nameless Seas is borrowed from one of Thielhelm's exhibitions, as are those of the four movements, which are bridged together into two halves of roughly equal weight - one rhapsodic and free, the other more single-minded and direct, separated only by a short breath. The opening movement, Nocturne, is predominantly calm, if brooding, darkness and light alternating throughout. Lyrical arabesques sparkle over gently lapping cross-currents in the strings and mirrored timpani, the piano's full power only rarely deployed. The waves gradually build, drawing in the full orchestra for a meeting of forces in Land and Sea, a brighter, more warmly lyrical scene that unfolds in series of dreamlike, sometimes even nostalgic visions, which for me carry strong memories of sitting on rocks above surging Atlantic waves. The third movement, Wake, is a fast, perpetual-motion texture of glinting, darting rhythms and sudden shafts of light, with a prominent part for the steel drums, limning the piano's quicksilver figurations. An ecstatic climax crashes into a solo cadenza that grows progressively calmer and more introspective rather than virtuosic. Much of the tension finally releases into Unclaimed Waters, a drifting, meditative seascape in which the piano is progressively engulfed by a series of ever-taller waves, ultimately dissolving into a tolling, rippling continuum of sound. It has been a great privilege to realize such a long-held dream as this piece, and to write it for not one, but two great pianists. Risto-Matti Marin and Angela Hewitt, both of whose friendship and support have been unfailing and humbling, share the dedication. Nameless Seas was commissioned by the PianoEspoo festival and Canada's National Arts Centre, with the premieres in Ottawa and Helsinki led by Hannu Lintu and Olari Elts. Thanks are due also to the Jenny and Antti Wihuri fund, whose generous grant provided me with much-needed time, and Escape to Create in Seaside, Florida, the source to which I returned to do a large part of the work.
SKU: HL.14030961
ISBN 9788759857458. English.
Score of the Danish Composer's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra written in 1996. Bent Sorensen writes: 'The title of this piano concerto came, as usual, very early to me, when my thoughts about the work had started to circulate, but before 'real' music was written down. I held on to the Italian title, even though its association with Vivaldi had no influence on my music, and even when German, French, English, and Danish titles covering almost the same content -'Nachtmusik', 'Nocturne', 'By Night', 'Om Natten', were just about to get the upper hand. The piano concerto has, then, in my opinion, something to do with night, but to describe this further is at least as difficult to me as it is to defend the final Italian title against those which were rejected. The Piano Concerto is in two movements. The first, swarming, is perhaps the mystery of the night, and the second perhaps the dreams of the night; with this, however, I have already given the concerto a more programmatic content than I can defend. Each movement ends with a cadenza and perhaps the last of those - the ending of the work that is - is inspired by a sequence from Bruce Chatwin's wonderful book 'The Viceroy of Ouidah': Or the Amazons howling. 'No, No, No. It was not the leopard that killed him. Not the buffalo that killed him. It was night. Night that killed him!'.
SKU: BR.PB-14620
The piano reduction and the study score (,,Studien-Edition) are available at G. Henle Verlag.
ISBN 9790004211038. 10 x 12.5 inches.
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his Piano Concerto no. 4 in 1805, thus contemporaneously with the opera Fidelio and the Symphonies nos. 5 and 6. The first performance took place on 22 December 1808 at the now legendary academy (subscription concert) in which Beethoven presented the two new symphonies and the Choral Fantasy op. 80 to the Viennese public for the first time. The work was first published that year by Breitkopf & Hartel. The autograph of the score is no longer extant. The principal source of the musical text on which the present edition is based is a scribal copy examined and corrected by Beethoven.
SKU: BR.PB-15160
ISBN 9790004215654. 10 x 12.5 inches.
Paganini's Capricci served as inspiration for many composers. In addition to Brahms, Schumann and Liszt, Rachmaninoff was also inspired by the idea. His Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini has since become one of his best known and most popular works and was an immediate success. In 1934, between two intense concert seasons, Rachmaninoff took advantage of the peace and quiet at his villa on Lake Lucerne to compose the Variations. Paganini's virtuosity and joy of playing are juxtaposed with the Gregorian sequence Dies irae. A symbol of the evil spirit to which Paganini sold his soul? At least that is how Rachmaninoff wrote it in a letter to the choreographer Fokine. For the demanding piano part, the composer and celebrated pianist himself had to start practicing very early: The composition is very difficult, and I should really start practicing now, but I get lazier with my finger exercises year after year.The editor, Norbert Gertsch, presents with this edition for the first time an Urtext edition of the work that Joachim Kaiser described as Rachmaninoff's most spiritual, witty, elegant work for piano..
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