SKU: FG.55011-881-2
The first composer to warrant a place in the musical history of Finland, Erik Tulindberg (1761-1814) was an excellent violinist, and he also played the cello. His musical reputation spread all the way to Stockholm (Finland was at that time part of the Kingdom of Sweden), and in 1797 was there admitted as a member of the Royal Academy of Music.The I violin, viola and cello parts of Tulindberg’s String Quartets were discovered in 1923 in the collections of Helsinki University Library. They were copies of the instrumental parts presumably made by Tulindberg himself, though they were possibly never used during his lifetime. Not only is the whole of the II violin part missing; the first movement of the viola part of the fifth Quartet stops in the middle of a phrase, and the last 60 bars or so of the movement’s manuscript page are just empty staves.In the early 2000s, the Rantatie Quartet asked Anssi Mattila whether he would like to reconstruct the missing II violin part. The job was finished in 2004 and the Rantatie Quartet released a Classical Emma-winning disc of the Quartets in 2006.This product includes the full score and the set of parts.
SKU: FG.55011-880-5
SKU: FG.55011-884-3
SKU: FG.55011-882-9
SKU: FG.55011-883-6
SKU: FG.55011-879-9
SKU: PE.EP72822
ISBN 9790577011769. 232 x 303mm inches. English.
I have only visited Damascus once, twenty years ago, on the way to Palmyra. I had a purpose (I was writing music for a play about Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia) but essentially I was a tourist. Like any visitor, I was thrilled to step out of the noisy modern city into the magical ancient world of the walled Old City, its vibrant souk leading to the magnificent mosque, and a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets filled with the smell of unleavened bread.
In Palmyra, I was met with extraordinary kindness everywhere. On one occasion, a little Bedouin boy noticed that I was risking sunstroke wandering bare-headed among the spectacular ruins: he showed me how to tie a turban, then took me to have tea with his family in their tent.
Since then, I have watched helplessly as these places of wonder have been devastated and their inhabitants scattered and killed. When the Sacconi Quartet suggested that I might choose a Syrian poet for our collaboration, I welcomed the idea.
I searched for a long time to find a contemporary poet whose work might gain from any music I could imagine. I felt it was important to find first-hand accounts of the Syrian experience – but, of course, I was always reading them in translation. In an anthology called Syria Speaks, I was astonished to read something that looked like prose, but was full of poetry. It was Anne-Marie McManus’s fine translation of Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky – an eloquent, thoughtful, contained yet vivid account of life in a war-torn country, all the more moving for its restraint.
In setting these words, I have not attempted to imitate Syrian music. However, there is what might be called a linguistic accommodation in my choice of scale, or mode. Several movements are in a mode that I first discovered while writing a cantata commemorating the First World War: it has a tuning that I associate with war, its violence and desolation. This eight-note mode is similar to scales found in Syrian music. I did not choose it in the abstract: it emerged from the harmonies I was exploring in the earlier work, and emerged again as I was looking for the right musical colours to set Ali Safar’s words. In this work, its Arabic aspect is more prominent. - Jonathan Dove
SKU: BO.B.3664
Cuarteto San Petersburgo (The Saint Petersburg Quartet) was written between January and March 2011. It owes its name to the fact that Saint Petersburg has been a very significant city for me. I was invited there in 1988 to take part in a big contemporary music festival, but my uninterrupted bond with the city started on 2002, thanks to the negotiations of my friend and pupil Albert Barbeta. Since then, I have constantly travelled there in order to record a considerable part of my repertoire: seventeen pieces. In addition to the concerts we went to, I took the opportunity during my trips to visit the well-known conservatoire where so many great personalities from the world of music composition once taught, and the place that launched the most important violin school in the whole of Russia: the school of Leopoldo Auer. Spending a long time in Auer's classroom writing my concert for violin and orchestra was an unforgettable experience for me. His large portrait motivated me even further.Cuarteto San Petersburgo evokes many of the most cherished and moving moments that I have had in this city. It is structured in four movements. The first one, Allegretto-Allegro, opens with an introduction that sets forth the two main themes, amid a soft and elastic atmosphere. The Allegro starts vigorously and in it we find changes in the tempo and moments of mystery, as well as certain seclusion, returning then to the emphatic theme where the counterpoint finds its place. The movement ends placidly.The Scherzo-marcato that follows is marked by a persistent rhythm of triplets that carries on from beginning to end. The tempo does not change, but brief and decided themes are introduced, as well as passages of counterpoint. Brief and dissonant chords are heard throughout the movement, which ends vigorously.The third movement, Ut, is a very special one. For a while already I had been playing with the idea of writing a movement that was to have the tonality C as a leitmotiv. This one is made up by two slow and static parts. In the first one, the first violin plays pizzicatti-glissandi. In the second, the first violin and particularly the violoncello settle on C while the other two instruments produce descending chromatic harmonies.Finally, the Introduccion-Presto (the Introduction-Presto). It starts with some bucolic passages which remind us of the introduction to the first movement. A fast and energetic Presto suddenly erupts. A kind of moto perpetuo which alternates with two expressive passages and, towards the end, a viola and violoncello tremolo, all of great mystery and expectation, make way for a resounding finale marcato.
SKU: HL.14036341
ISBN 9780711955080.
Commissioned by the BBC and premiered by the Chilingirian String Quartet. Quoting Wood: In my Second and Third Quartets I attempted sectional, agglutinative forms: in my Fourth I return to the conventional four movement form of my First Quartet of 1962. Both works build up (as in the 19th century symphony) to the Finale, thus making it the most substantial movement, which provides a climax to the work. The First Movement has, in both works, only the status of an Introduction. But there the consciously willed resemblances end. This Introduction follows the Second Quartet to a certain extent, in that it provides a sort of 'cauldron', from which elements to be used later can all be plucked. Its opening will reappear at various points throughout the work, most completely at a climatic point of the Finale (bar 110). Subsequent material will be more fully worked out in the second movement, a large Scherzo. The Introduction concludes with an unusually placed violin cadenza (itself a rare feature in a string quartet, the idea lifted from Elliott Carter's First Quartet) of which the opening is to reappear halfway through the Finale. The Scherzo (which follows attacca) does not have at its centre a discretely characterized Trio: a figure in double-stops like a distant fanfare supplies the necessary contrast of a second idea. The Slow Movement has a secondary idea first heard on the cello and marked appassionato: an agitato middle section recalls the opening of the work, but in a formulation which will be found closely to anticipate its reappearance in the Finale. The Finale is planned on a broad scale. Only after a fully worked exposition of both primary and secondary material does the opening of the whole work return, now in a greatly extended form. Then, at bar 140, the tune of the violin cadenza is first harmonized in fanfare style on the upper instruments, then presented as a chorale on the lower ones, with a rushing semiquaver accompaniment above. This climatic activity mounts to the very end. The work is dedicated to the Chilingirian Quartet, old friends over many years. Score available separately: SOS04044.
SKU: FG.042-08257-7
ISBN 979-0-042-08257-7.
Usko Merilainen's first string quartet is a serial work completed in 1965. The ground occupied by the work is closer than ever to the second Viennese school proper. Merilainen makes a deliberate attempt to break notational taboos. In two places in the second movement - each of about 10 bars - he makes use of time-space notation in a way typical of his work, thereby discarding precisely defined durational relationships.
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