SKU: HL.14023298

ISBN 9788759871591. English.

Per Norgard 's Gennem Torne / Through Thorns (2003) Harp Concerto No. 2 - Passage for Harp Solo with Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet. Premiered by Tine Rehling (Harp) and the Esbjerg Ensemble, conducted by Kaisa Roose at the Concert Hall of the Western Jutland Academy of Music, Esbjerg, 28th January 2004. Programme Note THROUGH THORNS has a duration of about 20 minutes, in one continuous movement, thus the subtitle passage. The work is scored for harp solo, flute, clarinet and string quartet. The title is borrowed from the lines from an old Virgin Mary Hymn: Mary wanders through thorns, a hymn which ends with the following line: then roses grew forth amongst thethorns. I only came across the poem after finishing the composition, the passage of which is a journey of sometimes dramatic events, concluding with a rose-blooming, as does the hymn.  For THROUGH THORNS to borrow its title from a Virgin Mary Hymn has to do with the musical material and current of the piece, which brings motives from an earlier choral piece of mine, FLOS UT ROSA (Latin for a flower like a rose), and the rose in question is of course the one which grew forth when the Virgin Mary gave birth to the Infant Jesus in a hitherto unheard-of fashion, a NOVA GENITURA (new birth), which is the title of another work of mine that also derives its material from my original rose-melody from 1975.  THROUGH THORNS is dedicated to Tine Rehling, and together with her I have tried to expand the sonorities of the harp, by exploring existing techniques and their more remote regions, in order to gain access to new territory and new soundscaoes, as realised by the constantly experimentally-minded and virtuoso player.  Per Norgard, 2004.   .

SKU: BT.DHP-1135315-070

ISBN 9789043146814. 9x12 inches. English-German-French-Dutch.

More Classical Highlights is the follow-up to Classical Highlights, a collection featuring arrangements of classical themes dating from the 17th century up to the19th century. The parts are quite easy and attractively written, but the arrangements stay as faithful as possible to the original works. Baroque music is represented with two highlights: the well-known Canon by Pachelbel may well be the most performed 17th century composition. The power of the piece lies in a bass line of only eight notes, above which the melodic line of the round itself develops. Réjouissance from Music for the Royal Fireworks is a very joyful composition bythe Anglo-German baroque composer Handel. The 18th century classical style gives us the refined minuet by Boccherini, the Italian composer who wrote a wealth of chamber music. The 19th century features in three famous works: the lively Marche Militaire No 1 by the Austrian composer Schubert originates from 3 Marches Militaires for four-handed piano. The Can Can from Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) is the best-known separately performed piece by the operetta composer Offenbach. Following this exciting dance music there is the beautiful, lofty Largo theme from the second movement of Czech composer Dvorákâ??s From the New World Symphony. In short: Six varying arrangements - challenging and very suitable for performances!

More Classical Highlights is het vervolg op Classical Highlights, een verzameling arrangementen van klassieke thema´s die dateren uit de periode van de 17e eeuw tot en met de 19e eeuw. De partijen zijn eenvoudig en aantrekkelijk geschreven; tegelijkertijd blijven de arrangementen dicht bij het origineel. De barokmuziek is vertegenwoordigd met twee highlights. De bekende Canon van Pachelbel is wellicht de meest gespeelde 17e-eeuwse compositie. De kracht ervan ligt in een baslijn van slechts acht noten waarboven zich het lijnenspel van de canon ontspint. Réjouissance uit Music for the Royal Fireworks is een zeer opgewekte compositie van deDuits-Engelse barokcomponist Händel. De 18e-eeuwse klassieke stijl horen we terug in het verfijnde menuet van Boccherini, een Italiaanse componist die een schat aan kamermuziek schreef. De 19e eeuw komt naar voren in drie beroemde stukken. De uitbundige Marche militaire nr. 1 van de Oostenrijkse componist Schubert komt uit 3 Marches militaires voor vierhandig piano. De Can Can uit Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in de onderwereld) is het beroemdste afzonderlijk uitgevoerde stuk van de operettecomponist Offenbach. Na deze opzwepende dansmuziek volgt het prachtige, gedragen thema uit het tweede deel van de symfonie Uit de nieuwe wereld met de titel Largo, van de hand van de Tsjechische componist Dvorák. Kortom: zes zeer afwisselende arrangementen, uitdagend en uitermate geschikt voor uitvoeringen!

More Classical Highlights ist die Fortsetzung von Classical Highlights, einer Sammlung von Arrangements klassischer Themen aus der Zeit vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Die Stimmen sind recht einfach gehalten und reizvoll ausgearbeitet; zugleich sind die Arrangements nah an den Originalstu cken. Der Barock ist mit zwei musikalischen Höhepunkten vertreten: Der bekannte Canon von Pachelbel ist vielleicht die meist gespielte Komposition aus dem 17. Jahrhundert. Die Kraft dieses Stu ckes liegt in einer Basslinie aus nur acht Noten, u ber der sich das eigentliche Gefu ge des Kanons entwickelt. Réjouissance aus der Feuerwerksmusik ist einesehr fröhliche Komposition des deutsch-englischen Barockkomponisten Händel. Ein Kleinod der Klassik aus dem 18. Jahrhundert ist das raffinierte Menuett von Boccherini, einem italienischen Komponisten, der einen gro�en Schatz an Kammermusik schrieb. Das 19. Jahrhundert ist mit drei beru hmten Werken vertreten: Der lebhafte Marche militaire No. 1 des �sterreichers Schubert stammt aus 3 Marches militaires fu r Klavier zu vier Händen. Der Can-Can aus Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in der Unterwelt) ist das beru hmteste separat aufgefu hrte Stu ck des Operettenkomponisten Offenbach. Nach dieser mitrei�enden Tanzmusik folgt ein schönes, erhabenes Thema aus dem zweiten Satz der Sinfonie Aus der Neuen Welt mit dem Titel Largo aus der Feder des tschechischen Komponisten Dvorák.

More Classical Highlights, qui fait suite au recueil Classical Highlights, rassemble une collection dâ??arrangements de thèmes classiques couvrant une période de trois siècles, du XVIIe au XIXe siècle. Les diverses parties instrumentales sont faciles et agréables jouer, mais les arrangements restent néanmoins fidèles aux compositions originales. La musique baroque est représentée par deux oeuvres toujours appréciées. Parmi toutes les compositions du XVIIe siècle, le célèbre Canon de Pachelbel est peut-être celle que lâ??on entend le plus souvent. Sa puissance réside dans une simple ligne de basse de huit notes par-dessus laquelle se développe le motif ducanon lui-même. Réjouissance, tirée de Music for the Royal Fireworks, est une pièce très enjouée du compositeur baroque anglo-allemand Haendel. Le style classique du XVIIIe siècle est inclus sous la forme dâ??un élégant menuet de Boccherini, un compositeur italien qui a écrit une quantité de musique de chambre. Le XIXe siècle est évoqué par trois oeuvres célèbres. La dynamique Marche militaire n° 1, du compositeur autrichien Schubert, extrait des Trois marches militaires pour piano quatre mains. Le Cancan dâ??Orphée aux enfers est la plus connue des oeuvres dâ??Offenbach, célèbre pour ses opérettes. Cette danse endiablée est suivie du Largo, admirable thème du deuxième mouvement de la Symphonie du Nouveau Monde, du compositeur tchèque Dvorák. En résumé : six arrangements variés, stimulants et parfaits pour être interprétés en concert !

SKU: PR.16400272S

UPC: 680160588442. 8.5 x 11 inches.

My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change.   I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]   The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla.   Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional.   II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts]   This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture.   This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream.   III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts]   The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this.   Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1.   String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.

SKU: HL.14008374

ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies' fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company, first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace, Oslo, Norway, as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004, with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor, an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq. I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560, now in Vienna), which had been the inspiration for my sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination, but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of the work. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog, bind the devil with a cord, truss, wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks, guess whom I shall choose, courting, odds and evens. The single movement juxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture, taking liberties which would never be present in, for instance, Brunelleschi architectural drawings, so here, with a constant sequence of transformation processes, I have distorted the neat, precise implications of modal progression, expressed in the unison opening phrase (from F to B through A sharp/B flat), so that the ear is led, en route, into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that I was reading into, and behind the games, adult motives and implications, concerning aggression and war, with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.

SKU: HL.14023435

ISBN 9788759867839. 7.0x10.0x0.143 inches. English.

This is the Study Score edition of Per Norgard's String Quartet No.8.