SKU: FG.55011-456-2
ISBN 9790550114562.
Three Strides of Light is inspired by the light and its behaviour in different circumstances, appearances and surroundings. The work is in three movements, but they are played together attacca. The first movement starts off with a headstrong theme on the left hand. This motif has persistent momentum, like a train, and one could think of it as the rays of a setting sun. The beams are straight and relentlessly penetrate our eyes. The seven-bar repetition on the left hand supports this mental image, until the repetition ends and a new thematically central motive starts to emerge, bringing new kind of texture for the last rays and dance of the setting sun. At the end, the light vanishes into the night. Second movemement, slow rubato, depicts the first rays of the rising sun, they drop behind a morning cloud into the day, growing, developing and becoming yet faster. Eventually the day opens up in all of it sunny glory. The music leads us towards the third movement, in which one bathes in the rays of the sun. The repetative motive of the first movement returns, but by now it has been transformed into something else. A pensive quintuplet-passage emerges, paving ground for the final themes of the work. The ending of the work is thick in sound, depicting the relentless glare of the sun and the heat sun creates. Within the entire work, one can imagine to have gone through a whole 24-hour period on the sea, in which the three strides of light are apparent in different parts of the day.
SKU: SU.80101244
This is an extended concert work (55 minutes) for solo piano. The work is set in a very long and freely-expressed rondo form. Throughout the duration of the piece there are four of five main ideas that are continually repeated and developed. There is much use of fast, cascading passages and tone clusters, but these are firmly contrasted with soft melody passages. The great white cosmic light is expressed by continual tremolando passages which reach their culmination at the very end of this long and expansive work.
SKU: PR.41641609L
UPC: 680160641260. 11 x 17 inches.
Luminary was composed to honor the 72nd birthday of pianist and teacher Bennett Lerner. The word luminary has two meanings: 1 (archaic), a natural light-giving object or source of light, especially the sun or the moon, the most important natural sources of light for the planet Earth; and 2, a person who inspires or influences others. Bennett Lerner is one of the latter and has inspired and influenced a myriad of musicians, especially pianists and composers. He is also a great advocate of new music. Luminary has three main sections, recalling a traditional concerto. It begins with fast repeated notes, which portray rays of light penetrating the atmosphere of the earth. The second section is peacheful and slow and the third section returns to the opening high energy. The piece contains a small hint of Southeast Asian music, but of unclear geographical origin. Luminary was commissioned by the Ansin Foundation, with the gracious support of the South Dakota Symphony and the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. It was first performed by the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, Dariusz Mikulski, conductor, with Christopher Janwong McKiggan as piano soloist, on June 17, 2016. Both the composer and the pianist were students of Bennett Lerner.
SKU: HL.50514259
SKU: KP.RCS3
SKU: WF.WM327
An early work (1880) written when the composer was only 25 years old and not included among his numbered works. The sonata was dedicated to Mme. Saint-Cyr de Rayssac, Chausson's godmother, a widowed nun whom the composer often visited when on vacation. Edited by John Craton from autograph manuscripts.
SKU: PA.H07911
ISBN 9790260104457. 31 x 23.5 cm inches.
Lubos Fiser (1935-1999) was one of the most talented Czech composers of his generation. Born in Prague, he studied at the Prague Conservatoire from 1952-1956 and then at the Academy of Music. He was known to the public for his many film scores but it was his other compositions, many of them written under difficult political conditions, which mark him out as a composer of significance.Fiser's eight piano sonatas have a special place in his oeuvre. Fiser subsequently eliminated his second sonata (1956) from his compositional repertoire. From the third sonata onwards (1960), subtitled Fantasia, the composer wrote a two-movement composition, in which he continued to incorporate as his fundamental musical device the confrontation of sharp contrasts in tempo and mood. Beginning with his fourth sonata (1962-1964), Fiser created a single-movement work in an expressive, formally focused composition which betrays a progression towards greater compactness of musical shape in a concise yet effective musical testimony. The fifth sonata was written in 1974, the sixth sonata in 1978. The seventh sonata from 1985 was dedicated to Frantisek Maxian, the eighth sonata was written in 1995.Piano Sonata No.1 was written in 1955. Fiser worked on it during his last year at the Prague Conservatoire under the supervision of Emil Hlobil. The piece is one of Fiser's early works which still respect a traditional compositional approach. Unlike his major and late piano sonatas, this sonata has three movements, each representing the traditional Classical-Romantic form. The sonata was premiered by Fiser's fellow-student and friend Antonin Jemelik in Theatre D34 on 30 January 1956.The new setting for this piece is based on the single edition to date (SNKLHU, 1957); only with regard to a few inconsistencies in the score was it necessary to consult the composer's manuscript (kept at the National Museum - Czech Museum of Music, acquisition number 297/2006).
SKU: FA.MFCD007PN
8.27 x 11.69 inches.
Debussy's friendship with the versatile poet and playwright Gabriel Mourey began in 1899, and in July 1907 Mourey offered Debussy a libretto based on Le roman de Tristan - Joseph Bedier's adaptation of a twelfth-century Breton romance by the Anglo-Norman poet known as Thomas - which had recently been published in Paris. Debussy enthusiastically outlined the four-act plot to Victor Segalen that October, and the main differences from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde are that none of the action takes place in Cornwall and that Isolde of the White Hands is found guilty of cuckolding King Marc with Tristan, who has to rescue her from the leper colony in which she is abandoned in Act 1. She also betrays him when he goes mad at the end.The idea of a Tristan that restored its 'legendary character' and had no connections with Wagner, appealed to Debussy, who was extremely moved by the circumstances of Tristan's death. Even if he thought that Mourey's poetry was 'not very lyrical and many passages do not exactly invite music', he did work on the libretto and the music that summer and sent his publisher, Jacques Durand, 'one of the 363 themes for the Roman de Tristan' in a letter sent from Pourville on 23 August, 1907. The present prelude grows from this theme, together with the poignant Breton folksong Le Faucon. After a short atmospheric introduction, Debussy's dance-like theme (which is definitely not a leitmotif) gradually gains momentum and after it reaches its ecstatic climax, representing the transient happiness of the lovers, it dissolves into an expressive coda and an elegiac close (all growing from Debussy's opening, off-stage trumpet calls), leaving us with the ultimate tragedy of their ill-fated affair.Unfortunately, Mourey's actual libretto has been lost and the project eventually foundered because Bedier's cousin, Louis Artus, wanted Debussy to use the scenario he had prepared and copyrighted for the stage, and would not allow him to proceed with Mourey's version. Debussy, it need hardly be said, would never have dreamed of collaborating with the author of the vaudeville hit La culotte (The pants)!
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