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: BR.EB-10859
ISBN 9790201808598. 9.5 x 12 inches.
After achieving sensational success with the musical Lady, be good! , with evergreens such as Fascinating Rhythm and The Man I love, as well as with his Rhapsody in Blue , Gershwin premiered his Concerto in F for piano and orchestra as a soloist at Carnegie Hall in 1925. Now, the new superstar of Broadway had also arrived at the center of New York's classical music scene. In its eventful history, the work went through numerous changes, cuttings, arrangements, many of which doubtful and unauthorized. Even the first and so far only printed orchestral score, edited by Frank Campbell-Watson, published in 1942 five years after Gershwin's death, contains many unauthorized interventions. Through years of research, editor Norbert Gertsch has succeeded in ridding the work of all unauthorized additions and alterations and thus reconstructing an Urtext in its original literal sense from the complex source material - from autograph sketches to early recordings. The first text-critical edition of the work is a joint production of Breitkopf (score/orchestral parts) and G. Henle Verlag (piano reduction).
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-15140
ISBN 9790004214763. 10 x 12.5 inches.
After achieving sensational success with the musical Lady, be good!, with evergreens such as Fascinating Rhythm and The Man I love, as well as with his Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin premiered his Concerto in F for piano and orchestra as a soloist at Carnegie Hall in 1925. Now, the new superstar of Broadway had also arrived at the center of New York's classical music scene. In its eventful history, the work went through numerous changes, cuttings, arrangements, many of which doubtful and unauthorized. Even the first and so far only printed orchestral score, edited by Frank Campbell-Watson, published in 1942 five years after Gershwin's death, contains many unauthorized interventions. Through years of research, editor Norbert Gertsch has succeeded in ridding the work of all unauthorized additions and alterations and thus reconstructing an Urtext in its original literal sense from the complex source material - from autograph sketches to early recordings. The first text-critical edition of the work is a joint production of Breitkopf (score/orchestral parts) and G. Henle Verlag (piano reduction).
SKU: BR.PB-15152
In Cooperation with G. Henle Verlag
ISBN 9790004215579. 10 x 12.5 inches.
The piano concerto in a minor stands out in Edvard Grieg's oeuvre. Besides this famous concerto, he composed only a few other large orchestral works. Because of its popularity even in Grieg's lifetime, it was often performed, not least by the composer himself. So it is not surprising that Grieg made many changes to the score up to 1907. But at the same time, the concerto's size, form and substance remained completely unaltered. Interventions in the piano part basically involved subtleties of nuance, and only a very few places in the music text were altered. The situation was different with the orchestration. Here Grieg was keen to experiment and kept filing away at the orchestra sound right up to the last. Melodies were moved to other instruments, accompanying string chords were reconstructed, and above all the list of scored instruments was changed. The main source of the Urtext edition by Ernst-Gunter Heinemann is the new edition of the score originally published in 1907 by C. F. Peters, thus several years after the first edition of 1872. Taken into account in the present edition are the changes that Grieg made up to the time of his death. Piano reduction and fingering by Einar Steen-Nokleberg.
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