Chamber Music Piano

SKU: PR.140401310

Composed by Nora Holt. Edited by Lara Downes. Sws. Score. 8 pages. Duration 2 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #140-40131. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.140401310).

ISBN 9781491134153. UPC: 680160684250. 9 x 12 inches. Key: G major.

NORA’S DANCE is a jazz-influenced rag from 1921, and among the only surviving compositions by Nora Douglas Holt. A charming and exciting work rejuvenated by Lara Downes’ 2021 recording for the Rising Sun label, the rag is both a fun 2 minutes for pianists and audiences, and also a fascinating time capsule. Composed several years after Scott Joplin’s death, and several years before the Charleston pervaded popular music, NORA’S DANCE blossoms with the energy and jazz harmony starting to emerge as The Roaring 20’s, using ragtime and stride as the seed for pianistic style.
My own life in music has been driven by a quest to find strong female role models, trails to follow, shoulders to stand on. In Nora Douglas Holt, I find an inspiring example of creativity, independence, and resilience – with a dash of troublemaking. She was a free spirit, a force of nature, and she lived a fascinating and eventful life on her own terms. She reinvented herself through five marriages and at least as many careers. From her beginnings at the piano at age four, she explored many avenues of musical expression – performing, composing, music journalism, broadcasting, teaching – all with inventiveness, style, and zeal.She made the most of the Roaring ’20s, as an artist, socialite, jetsetter, muse, and patroness of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1921 she started an independent arts journal called “Music and Poetry,” where the charming piano solo Nora’s Dance was first published. I think the piece captures beautifully, in a little under 2 minutes, the energy and excitement of those heady years.In 1926, Nora left New York to travel the world, performing in nightclubs throughout Europe and Asia. She put her belongings in storage before she left, and when she came back she discovered that many of her things had been stolen, including more than 200 of her musical compositions. She never composed again.When the Depression hit, she moved out to Los Angeles, where she studied music education at USC, taught music in the LA public schools, and opened her own beauty salon. She returned to New York in the ’40s and worked as a music critic for several major newspapers, then launched yet another career, this time in broadcasting. Her popular radio concert series “Nora Holt’s Concert Showcase” broadcast to New York’s classical music audience, with a focus on Black composers and performers.Ahead of her time, larger than life, full of ideas…. I am so pleased to introduce you to the feisty and free spirited Nora Douglas Holt!

Graded Solos in Their Original Form - Classic to Modern - Volume Three - Intermediate. By Ada Richter; Anton Diabelli; Bela Bartok; Cesar Franck; Domenico Scarlatti; Edvard Grieg; Franz Joseph Haydn; Franz Schubert; Frederic Chopin; George Frideric Handel; Geza Horvath; Herbert Elwell; Isadore Freed; Paul Nordoff; Reinhold Gliere. Edited by Ada Richter, Isadore Freed. Text: Ada Richter. Solo piano. For Piano Solo. Theodore Presser Company Distinguished Collection Series. Solo part. 40 pages. Published by Theodore Presser Company.

Revised Edition. Composed by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Edited by Camilla Cai. Henle Music Folios. Softcover. 44 pages. G. Henle #HN560. Published by G. Henle (HL.51480560).

By Walter Noona. Piano. Level: Level 2. Piano method. Published by Heritage Music Press.

Composed by Bela Bartok (1881-1945), edited by Dr Benjamin Suchoff. For piano. The Archive Edition. Format: piano solo book. With standard notation, fingerings and introductory text. 20th Century and Hungarian. 150 pages. 9x12 inches. Published by Dover Publications.

Piano

SKU: BT.ESZ-01494800

Composed by Sandor Veress. Score Only. Edizioni Suvini Zerboni #ESZ 01494800. Published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni (BT.ESZ-01494800).

With his Venti pezzi per pianoforte (1938), the Hungarian composer Sándor Veress (1907-92) wanted to create a collection of piano miniatures on folk melodies destined for use in the concert hall as well as for teaching purposes. Each piece is based on one or more songs and dances from different Hungarian speaking areas, which are re-elaborated and presented in a carefully conceived alternation of character, musical writing and technical difficulty. The result is a multi-colored overview of Hungarian folk music: songs of a pathetic or even dramatic nature are contrasted with lighter and high-spirited pieces, interspersed with dances of varying types, among which a homogeneousblock stands out formed by the group of Csárdás, a typical tavern dance also used by Liszt. The Venti pezzi per pianoforte represent the culmination of the extensive ethnomusicological research made by Veress in the ’30s and ‘40s, while working as assistant to László Lajtha and to Béla Bartók, and at the same time carrying out field work in Hungary and neighboring countries. The composer intended that this collection should play a fundamental role of mediation between folklore and western “art” music, by revitalizing the language from within, without resorting to the abstractions of the experimentation being developed in Europe at the time. During his lifetime Veress never succeeded in publishing the complete version of the Venti pezzi per pianoforte, but issued various selections of the pieces, two of which remained totally unpublished. The present critical edition prepared by Giada Viviani reconstructs the complete text of the Venti pezzi per pianoforte on the basis of manuscript sources kept at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel: the musical scores, with fingering by Jakub Tchorzewski, are accompanied by an introductory essay on the context in which the collection was created, including a description of the state of the sources and a detailed apparatus criticus of the textual variants.

Con i suoi Venti pezzi per pianoforte (1938), il compositore ungherese Sándor Veress (1907-92) ha voluto creare una raccolta di miniature pianistiche su melodie popolari destinate sia a un uso concertistico, sia all’attivit didattica. In ogni branovengono rielaborati uno o più canti e danze provenienti da diverse aree geografiche di lingua ungherese, che si susseguono in base a una sapiente alternanza di carattere, scrittura musicale, difficolt esecutiva. Viene così offerta una variegatapanoramica della musica popolare di questa nazionalit : a canti di contenuto patetico o addirittura drammatico se ne affiancano di più leggeri e giocosi, avvicendandosi a danze di natura differente, tra cui spicca come un blocco omogeneo il gruppodelle Csárdás, tipica danza da locanda utilizzata anche da Liszt.I Venti pezzi per pianoforte rappresentano il coronamento della ricca attivit etnomusicologica condotta da Veress tra gli anni ’30 e ‘40, sia lavorando come assistente di László Lajtha e di Béla Bartók, sia svolgendo ricerca sul campo in Ungheria enei paesi limitrofi. Per il compositore, questa raccolta doveva svolgere un fondamentale ruolo di mediazione tra il folklore e la musica “colta” occidentale, in maniera da rivitalizzarne il linguaggio dall’interno, senza gli astrattismi dellesperimentazioni allora condotte in Europa.Nel corso della sua vita Veress non riuscì mai a pubblicare la versione integrale dei Venti pezzi per pianoforte, mentre ne fece uscire sul mercato alcune selezioni, lasciando del tutto inediti due brani. La presente edizione critica a cura di GiadaViviani ricostruisce il testo completo dei Venti pezzi per pianoforte in base alle fonti manoscritte conservate presso la Fondazione Paul Sacher di Basilea: gli spartiti musicali, corredati dalla diteggiatura di Jakub Tchorzewski, sono accompagnatida un saggio introduttivo sul contesto di creazione della raccolta, dalla descrizione dello stato delle fonti e da un dettagliato apparato critico delle varianti testuali.

Piano

SKU: FG.55011-717-4

Composed by Einar Englund. Score. Fennica Gehrman #55011-717-4. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-717-4).

ISBN 9790550117174.

It was through Einar Englund (1916-1999) that the Neoclassicism already familiar elsewhere in the world landed on Finnish shores in the late 1940s. A composer especially of large-scale orchestral and chamber works, Englund is one of the greatest Finnish symphonists.

Sinuhe is an example of a Finnish composition founded on a non-Finnish subject handled in a non-National-Romantic way. This probably partly explains why the score has fallen into oblivion in Finland: the Oriental moods and the Nile do not correspond to the view of a Finnish composition as one favouring topics from the national epic, the Kalevala, and lakeland scenery. The music also incorporates motifs derived from Lapp yoiks used by Englund in his score for the film The White Deer (1952). When it was written, the ballet's combination of a historical subject with an exotic, stylised idiom showed that Englund had his finger on the international pulse, unlike, say, Samuel Barber's ballet Medea (1946) and Aram Khachaturian's ballet Spartacus (1956).

The suite from Sinuhe is in five scenes. It omits the original overture and almost all the music for the second half of the ballet. Sinuhe's hapless love for the courtesan Nefernefer is described with languorous sensuality. His servant Kaptah throws himself into a frenzied dance with the Cretan maidens. The suite ends with the rhythmic war dance of his friend Horemheb.

Piano

SKU: FG.55011-676-4

Composed by Juhani Nuorvala. Classical. Book. Fennica Gehrman #55011-676-4. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-676-4).

Juhani Nuorvala (b. 1961) wrote The Five Chords That Shook My World (2020) for pianist Nicolas Horvath's Hommage a Glass project and it is dedicated to him. It's a fantasy meditation on the Train/Spaceship chords in Einstein, that repeating five-chord progression (Fm - Db - A - B7 - E) about which the composer has said that there's something strange, because it never fails to lift the audience to its feet. The duration of the piece is c. 6'30'', and it was premiered by Emil Holmstrom at RUSK festival (Pietarsaari, Finland) 20th November 2020. A notable variety of influences - microtonality, American minimalism, New Romanticism, popular music, techno - has been regarded as a special feature of Nuorvala's idiom. Despite this he is not a collage artist; instead he has blended various ingredients to create a mode of expression entirely his own. Nuorvala's works are often marked with frenzied rhythmic drive. He makes music using elements and materials that both the mind and the body respond to. He finds these elements not only in old or new classical music but in various forms of urban popular music, such as the electronic music of modern dance clubs.

Selected Works for the Piano. Edited by Maurice Hinson. For Piano. Piano Collection. Alfred Masterwork Edition. Latin; Masterwork. Level: Intermediate / Early Advanced. Book. 80 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing.